INTRODUCING: Tom Emlyn

Described by Adam Walton (BBC Radio Wales) as a “peripatetic musical genius,” Tom Emlyn has quietly built one of the most distinctive bodies of work in contemporary Welsh music. Across five self-released albums and countless side projects, his songs sketch an alternative Southwalian landscape — part observation, part hallucination — where humour, bitterness, tenderness, and myth coexist. Rooted in lo-fi folk and indie rock but constantly shape-shifting through psychedelia, jazz, blues, and glam-rock fuzz, Emlyn’s music is both deeply local and strangely universal.

With a new single, Starsick, skewering the seductive danger of fame, Emlyn reflects on place, productivity, humour, experimentation, and the thin line between belief and self-delusion.

1. Your songs map what you’ve described as an “alternative Southwalian landscape,” shaped by local history and psychogeography. How does place actively shape your songwriting—are you documenting somewhere real, or inventing a version of it as you go?

I would say it's a bit of both. I really believe you should try to be inspired by your surroundings, by the everyday. I try to write from a place of observation, of noticing things, small details about people, places and so on. South Wales is such a rich place, historically and otherwise. It's only natural that it influences a songwriter. I'd say it's a major character in my songwriting. I do try to give it a larger than life aspect, though. Although a lot of it is taken from observation of life, I'm trying to elevate it to a mythic status. Really I want to create a kind of dreamworld that reflects certain mythological aspects of South Wales. Not that I sit down and try to do this. It emerges naturally from a combination of conscious and unconscious writing over a period of years.

2. Critics often mention how your work balances bitterness, humour, and tenderness. Do you see humour as a defence mechanism, a storytelling tool, or something more instinctive in how you process the world?

I think it's quite instinctive. It's an absurdist, deflective tool. It's easier to write around a feeling or a sentiment, sometimes, and that ironic deflection can feel a lot more real than addressing something head-on. I love the idea of the unreliable narrator in song lyrics. The idea that you can't trust anything that's being said; there's something evasive and twisty going on. Something that hints at huge, tumultuous feelings beneath the cool surface of one-liners, ironic metaphors, reversed proverbs and twists in the tale. This is why I often use the second-person pronoun 'you' in my songs. Addressing the lyric to the listener, although actually I'm just talking to myself a lot of the time.

3. You’ve been called both “Wales’ most prolific musician” and a “musical chameleon.” How do you decide when a song belongs to a solo Tom Emlyn record versus one of your bands, or does that distinction only emerge later?

It emerges naturally from the substance of the song. Currently my main other project is the madcap psychedelic band Rainyday Rainbow, which has a certain freeing carnivalesque energy that requires a certain type of song. When I get an idea, it's obvious where it's meant to be, and almost feels like a magical place to put the song. I've been in a lot of bands, and I've made something of an art form from recycling chords and lyrics, repurposing discarded shapes into new forms. Some of my favourite writers and musicians did the same thing. Dylan Thomas got most of his early poetry from extensive notebooks created during his prolific teenage years. Elliott Smith reworked obscure early material from his first couple of high school bands and used them for his solo album releases. I see songwriting as an unfolding diary, a very personal thing that can morph and take on new shapes as you look back. Some of the ideas I'm working on now go back to my teenage years. It's nice to realise the ideas of your younger self.

4. Your new single Starsick tackles the idea of fame as something disorienting and even physically dangerous. Was this song born out of personal experience, observation of the industry, or a broader cultural anxiety around ‘making it’?

A bit of everything. You have to be careful, when you're promoting yourself, not to believe your own hype. You have to believe in what you're doing, but not become swallowed by the black hole of self-promotion. So it's a very thin line to walk in that sense. Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but you need to keep your mind intact and open to inspiration. I've been in a lot of bands and I've seen my fair share of the music industry. The song, honestly, was inspired by a particular band I played with, who were meant to be the next big thing and crashed and burned in spectacular fashion. So 'Starsick' is really that old skewering of the rockstar cliche, funneled through personal experience and sung to a fuzzy lo-fi glam-rock riff, with spikes of synth. Form and function. Originally it began as a pun on the word 'carsick'; I was imagining flying up in a spaceship and being sucked out the window of the airlock or something. Like a deep-sea diver, rising to the surface too quickly, suffering decompression sickness blues. So I suppose it's a warning not to ascend too soon.

5. From lo-fi folk to glam-rock fuzz, harmonica to Casio drum machines, your music pulls from a huge range of sounds. How important is experimentation to staying emotionally honest in your work—and do limitations ever help you get closer to the truth of a song?

I try to do something different with each song I write. It's boring to repeat yourself and fun to try new ideas and be playful with what you're doing. A sense of playfulness is essential. I don't make a conscious effort to try new sounds and techniques. It seems to happen naturally from a sense of curiosity and embracing what's around you. Limitation is helpful yes, it forces you to use what's available in interesting new ways. You can get an endless amount of new sounds from a single instrument, like using a guitar in percussive or textural ways. I always try and find new ways to express myself, and that's why each of my albums is quite different. It's an evolving journey.