Review: Cerys Hafana’s breathtaking new album, Angel

Stephen Price

Cerys Hafana’s third album Angel hit shelves and streaming services on Friday, the highly anticipated follow-up to 2022’s critically acclaimed Edyf, and a handful of ‘side quests’ in the piano-based form of Crwydro and Difrisg.

Perhaps expecting these deviations from the path to go unnoticed, Difrisg hasn’t taken kindly to its relegation to album 2.5, finding itself a contender for Welsh Music Prize 2025. A deserved entry. A remarkable piece of music.

But name me an album on the list that isn’t – hours upon hours of time, talent, practice, fight, sleepless nights. Give everyone a crown, let’s all be king.

To the task in hand, however, ‘reviewing’ Angel.

Opening with an admission. I’ve not found this responsibility easy. I heard touches of jazz and wondered if this *might* not be for me (Kate Bush’s later complex, free-flowing, breathing and pulsing work suggesting I was being silly. Very very silly).

I’ve played the album possibly thirty times or more now. I’ve played it with others to get their take, and it feels like I still have work to do, angles to explore, more information to mine, and like Edyf before this, I’ll be playing it again, again and again until I can come closer to knowing the unknowable.

Harnessing the divine

Opening with Helynt Ryfeddol, the tone is set. Lyrics telling the tale of a man who is charmed by otherworldly birdsong. Mesmerised, he returns to his home to find everything changed.. the people.. the time.. everything. His confusion made into the most spectacular music, with a feeling of falling, of realisation, confusion, crescendo.

We are in for something very different, with a very unclear path.

The second track, O’r Coed, with its jazz flutters brings to mind blackness, soundscape, seascape, space.

Drexelius, the album’s third track is one of its highlights. Repetition is used for hypnotic, euphoric effect – something seen on earlier work but at its most bold here.

Just Cerys at play on the harp, and what a masterful showcase this song is for the instrument’s complexity, almost two songs intertwined, Cerys harnessing the divine. The utterly divine. Each and every time it plays, I don’t want it to end.

Carol Mynyddog follows, and with it comes the second appearance of Cerys’ voice, unaccompanied, with the sax appearing solemnly, shyly at first.

As always, Cerys’ mastery of musicianship means their voice is always instrument, up front when needed, behind or unnecessary for the mission of the song. Their vocals never oversung, its musicality, clarity, simplicity, enough.. the dance between sax and voice in full step.

Hafana explained previously that the way the voice and saxophone interplay is an approximation of the Breton ‘kan ha diskan’ singing style, where the singers alternate lines to maintain a steady melody and rhythm to aid dancing, and admits that the Breton folk style “has wormed its way into my brain (and heart)”.

The song reaches its crescendo at around 4 minutes, with one of the finest examples of Cerys’ understated harnessing of the sinister. How they make its lyrics (translated), ‘O! come back the Spring, breathe contentedly, and let the beauty put its head on your chest, to listen to the singings of joyfulness’ sound as dark as they do, I don’t know, but dark it sounds. Deliciously so.

Urgent

An Dro begins with Breton flushes. Again, repetition, and build, used to its most spectacular potential.

Abstract wordless movements conjure images of courtiers, chin high, in a medieval dance-off, a joust of body and movement, as Cerys’ voice takes turns in the back seat for the instruments to shine.

The song is another euphoric peak of the album.. the music pushing forward continuously into a skin-prickling high of highs before the other musicians leave the floor for a focus on the most delicate of harp strings.

Track six, Ffarwel i F’ieunctid (farewell to my youth) feels like a welcome calm after the floods that came prior. A wordless ‘All is Full of Love’ after Bjork’s violent Pluto.

350 Mlynedd at first felt the most akin to earlier works as seen on Edyf, with its advancement shown in shimmers of percussion and string, but each listen, each take, has brought through its hidden mastery – its emergence as another album highlight.

Where some tracks border on the darker edges, this is perhaps a more melancholic flush.. the harp’s potential to hit at the heart at its most potent. A breathtaking piece of music from start to finish.

Angel, the penultimate track, is undoubtedly the album’s pinnacle.. Cerys’ voice at its most touching, heartfelt..

Waves build, crash, relentlessly crash. One of its translated lines reads, ‘How much joy there is to be amazed more and more everyday without end.’

There’s a reason this track formed the album’s title. Cerys’ voice set against urgent accompaniment.

Instruments, man made and far from modern, uniting for some of the most modern euphoric music I’ve heard this year.

Akin to O’r Coed, final track Atsain is a very clear step into the cinematic soundscape – a moment or two to digest what we’ve all just witnessed.

A freefalling, euphoric closure. A putting away of instruments, music books, cases, form, with an unexpected return of Cerys’ voice, alone, unaccompanied. A strange brilliance all their own.

Element, wonder, mastery

Cerys’ talent lies in their ability to know when less is more, often the harp is enough, the harp and voice is enough – will always be enough. Playing to expectation and formula, however, isn’t optional. Angel feels like a showcase of intent, of rule-breaking, of utterly exceptional talent, knowledge and love of music.

Those already initiated with Cerys’ best work, will find a welcome home in the familiar darkness of their take on Welsh and Celtic folk. Jolly ditties, cliched and overdone, this is not.

This is living, breathing, brooding folk music reinvigorated, reimagined.

I have a feeling this album, this otherworldly masterpiece, will take on unexpected guises as time passes, and I’m here for all of them.

Next level. A pinnacle among pinnacles. An elemental, wonderful, masterful thing – a gift to make a not so good year worthwhile after all.

‘How much joy there is to be amazed more and more everyday without end.’

Diolch eto, eto, eto.

Listen to Angel on all streaming platforms or purchase on Bandcamp in CD or vinyl form.