Melin Melyn On The Mill On The Hill, Protecting Our Venues And Bilingualism

George Ward

Freelance journalist and online editor for CLUNK. Can be found out and about in Bristol, finding cheap records or having a pint on King Street.

With their debut album ‘Mill On The Hill’ out this Friday, we chatted with Welsh indie rock 6-piece Melin Melyn

On their debut album ‘Mill On The Hill,’ the members of Welsh indie 6-piece Melin Melyn take on the role of the millers, working at the titular mill in ‘Melin Village’. If you’re local to the area, you might even recognise them from their previous employment at the Jolly Basket Supermarket Store two years ago – “We lost our jobs there. We were juggling too much, weren’t we, Garmon?” frontman Gruff shares.

Speaking to the two songwriters Gruff Glyn (vocals/guitar/sax) and Garmon Rhys (bass/backing vocals), the charming but bizarre premise of ‘Mill On The Hill’ becomes clearer: “a lot of people think that flour is made inside a mill but that’s not the case or certainly not in ours. We go in there to create music, produce it, record it there, and then blast it out to anyone who wants to listen.”

“The album isn’t about the mill, the songs have their own story. You know, it’s not Ziggy Stardust in the way that you could follow it through. I’d love to write a musical one day where it’s all connected to the same storyline, and perhaps we’ll do that next.”

The songs aren’t about the mill, they’re made inside the mill. Got it?

But, with all tales, there must be conflict. “There’s a greedy landlord from a nearby city who wants to knock down the mill. He owns the mill. He bought it for millions, but he wants to knock it down to build a car park on top of it,” Gruff tells me, solemnly. “So we’ve got this campaign at the moment called ‘Save The Mill’. And we’ve got a lot of people who are in support of saving the mill, because without the mill, there’d be no music for Melin Village and Melin Melyn would cease to exist and we don’t want a world without music.”

Underneath the lovely whimsy of our chat does lie something much more serious. While preparing for the album and its rollout, Melin Melyn were struck with just how many grassroots independent venues were shutting down, and this quickly became a vital part of their message. By buying tickets to their gigs, you are supporting the millers of The Mill On The Hill, yes, but you’re also supporting the other wonderful ‘mills’ along their tour.

“Without grassroots venues, the live music scene would come to a slow and horrible halt… too many mills have been knocked down,” Gruff simply and beautifully puts it.

With nearly all of the members being Welsh speakers or, like guitarist Will Barratt, “have been known to learn Welsh.” I worried that the band would be weary of talking about singing both in English and Welsh but both Gruff and Garmon lit up when talking about their bilingualism.

“Garmon and I and Cai and Rhodri will always speak Welsh with each other. I remember reading that in the media when I was young and really hoping that other Welsh bands spoke Welsh with each other, because when I was at a Welsh Language school, speaking Welsh was seen as such an uncool thing to do.”

“Melin Comprehensive,” Gruff quickly adds, suddenly remembering he’s meant to be staying in character. “We’ve had people coming up to us after gigs and saying they’re even learning the language because of our band and that’s really cool.”

The vocals will often switch between Welsh and English throughout the album, much like the majority of Welsh speakers naturally do. “We’re very proud of our Welsh upbringings but we’re also incredibly proud of being bilingual and it would be disingenuous of us to write an album that wasn’t,” Garmon tells me.

“Your ability to articulate certain thoughts or feelings or tell certain stories, they lend themselves to one language better than the other, especially just how your imagination is fired within your brain. Sometimes something just sort of takes a slightly Welsh detour or more vice versa.”

Though not spoken by everyone, Gruff tells me how there were, and still are, parts of Wales where you can “Live a life through Welsh: your family, your friends, your career… and then your funeral.”

As well as pride for their bilingualism and heritage, there is a huge respect from the band about those who have picked up languages too: “I’m completely amazed by people who have naturally grown up with four languages. I couldn’t imagine fitting another one into my head.” Gruff tells me I look like someone who speaks French because of my earring and wool jumper. It makes my whole week.

On the album, and certainly their live shows, there is a serious amount going on at once. With 6 members and instruments ranging from indie basics to saxophones and pedal steel, Melin Melyn create wonderful and incredibly fun chaos on stage and in the studio, while always remaining perfectly tight with one another.

Songwriting duties on ‘Mill On The Hill’ are split between Gruff and Garmon. Gruff will take an idea, either a hook or a riff or a single line and create a demo himself, before sharing with the band to flesh it out or, in some cases, find out if it’s even playable. “We brought in a really good French horn player. I wrote what I thought was quite simple on the French horn, but I composed it on the piano and then to have a really, really shit hot French horn player come in and go, “this is really difficult,” I felt quite proud of myself.”

“The way I write is-“ Garmon starts,

“AI” Gruff interrupts.

In reality, Garmon begins with a drum beat, before building upon that, while always having to think of his co-writer. “If I write a song, I have to keep in mind that it’s most likely gonna be Gruff singing those lyrics or those melodies. So it’s almost a bit like ghostwriting in a way, which can have its own challenges.”

What both writers have in common are their unmatched ability to take seemingly small moments from life and transform them into whimsical and hilarious songs. Gruff wrote ‘Hold The Line, from the ‘Happy Gathering’ EP, while actually on hold on a particularly gruelling call with Bulb Energy.

Meanwhile, on ‘Fantastic Food,’ Garmon wrote the lyrics when he tried some soup at a Pan-African restaurant, touched by his Nigerian girlfriend telling him that it ‘tasted like home’, before a waitress frantically ran over screaming “no, no, no, there’s shellfish in there!” But it was too late, and while his girlfriend was running to Sainsbury’s to grab some antihistamines for his slowly swelling face and lips, Garmon quietly began singing “eating fantastic food” to himself.

When asked what they were most looking forward to about their upcoming tour, both Gruff and Garmon agreed on Glasgow, having never played Scotland before. Melin Melyn are a band who love the challenge of having to adapt to unique spaces, whether the Mountain Stage at Green Man or a small pub. “Personally, I don’t want to see or hear exactly what I’ve heard on the album. And I do believe that if people are paying good money to come and see us in something, we need to put on a show,” Gruff shares, with a lot of the band from theatrical backgrounds.

“We also love getting other people involved, we’ve had a dance troupe called Kitchen Sink from Cardiff, they’re brilliant. I do tend to think big when it comes to live shows. So when we do turn up to little pubs, we have to adapt quite quickly. I just think visually a lot.”

“I know so many amazing bands who would be so out of their comfort zone in Melin Melyn. And there have been people who’ve stepped in and they just don’t get it. And there are other bands that I couldn’t be a part of too.”

Garmon adds, “We as the other five members and our tour manager, we’ve just developed the muscles of saying yes”.

After reading this interview, listening to their debut album or catching one of their sets, there shouldn’t be any doubt in your mind that Melin Melyn are one of the most wonderful, silly, kind and genuinely creative bands out there. Their music isn’t comedy music, but it is greatly influenced by the dark comedy of ‘Inside No. 9’ and ‘League Of Gentleman,’ giving it a unique blend of charming sweetness quick-witted humour. “We write murder music!” Gruff jokingly and sinisterly announces.

‘Mill In The Hill’ is technically a concept album, but don’t let that put you off. Quite simply, the concept is that a team of hard-working millers work in a mill to produce music for the masses, overwatched by the mill’s builder, a wizard named Henk, who lives on as a machine. If this sounds as up your street as it does mine, I could not recommend it enough. Go and support your local mill and buy a ticket.

After a question about the recording of the album, Gruff gives me a particularly in-depth answer, delving into technicalities and his process. But as he wraps up his sentence, he suddenly stops. “We must remember that all of this has been made inside of a mill. We need to start the interview again.”

Debut album ‘Mill On The Hill’ is out on 7th March via Kartel Music Group.

Catch Melin Melyn at the following:

March 19th – Bristol, Strangebrew

March 20th – Manchester, Deaf Institute

March 21st – Glasgow, SWG3 Poetry Club

March 22nd – Newcastle, The Cluny2

March 23rd – Leeds, The Brudenell Social Club

March 25th – Birmingham, Hare & Hounds

March 26th – Brighton, Dust

March 27th – London, EartH (Hall)

March 28th – Cardiff, Tramshed

April 30th – Liverpool, District