Coincidence? I don’t think so. 

The Beach Boys pose with alpacas or llamas or something and Bill Ryder-Jones has his photo taken with alpacas or llamas or something. That’s one way of showing your influences.  

I wish I could say that I’ve followed Bill’s career from the time I saw him busking as a young unknown at a station. The truth is that I hadn’t heard of him until Iechyd Da was released earlier this year to incredibly positive reviews. Not being reluctant to jump onto a bandwagon, I listened to it and fell in love with it immediately. For my money it’s the best album of 2024 and is certainly the one I have listened to most often. I defy anyone to listen to This Can’t Go On or If Tomorrow Starts Without me and not choke up a little bit. The whole work is suffused with an uplifting melancholia. 

He is very honest about the inner sources of his music: 

 
“A large part of me is locked to traumas that happened when I was very young, and I’m aware of that. I feel it’s very hard to move on with life and move away from the trauma. I have flashbacks quite often. And I do a lot of work in therapy about what happened to me when I was young.” 

That’s a reference to the death of his brother, but he is equally open about his ADHD, addictions and loneliness. He has taken all that and created a thing of great beauty which he performed with a twelve-piece band in the Barbican. Judging from the accents it seemed like quite a few people had travelled down from his native Merseyside to catch the biggest show of his career. This included one in row I who wanted to start a fight when asked to stop being an irritating pillock and shut up.  

The show was simply a performance of Iechyd Da and lasted a little over an hour. There were several moments when the fragility of Bill’s voice accompanied by the string section really captured the space and tenderness of the recording. Too often though the drums overwhelmed virtually everything else. People in other parts of the auditorium may have experienced the mix differently but that’s how it sounded towards the back of the hall.  

Setting aside that technical quibble, it was an opportunity to see and hear a songwriter of great talent and emotional depth perform with a large group of musicians pieces of music which were born out of pain and grief. One of the things I managed to hear Bill say when the twerp in front of me wasn’t talking was that creating the album were four of the best and worst years of his life. Perhaps in that his creative process is a bit like Brian Wilson’s.  

God only knows when the next Bill Ryder-Jones tour or album will be. Records as good as Iechyd Da don’t come along very often, but I hope we don’t have to wait too long.