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It's hard to believe that Gorky's Zygotic Mynci have been surreptitiously ploughing their own distinctive musical furrow for a full decade now. The eight (count 'em) albums they have produced in that time add up to what could be the finest body of work in contemporary British pop, from the pubescent punk of 'Peanut Dispenser' to the immaculately crafted folk of last year's 'The Blue Trees' eight- tracker, perhaps the only truly perfect record of the millennium thus far. It would be hard to imagine a more aptly titled LP than 'How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart'. Gorky's have always seemed frozen in that moment between sunlit exuberance and autumnal reflection, when the leaves begin to turn and the nights grow cold, when the long summer afternoons begin to seem like a distant memory. Their rural Welsh upbringing lends to the music a lush, agrarian gentleness; this is timeless music, endlessly evocative of happier, simpler days long gone. Opener Where Does You Go Now?, swamped with melodramatic strings, feels like a return to the pastoral psychedelia of 1997's 'Barafundle', but things soon settle into a more familiar tone with delicate country strum Honeymoon With You, a dead ringer for Faraway Eyes from '99's 'Spanish Dance Troupe'. On the sadder songs - Dead Air, These Winds, closer Hodgeston's Hallelujah - Euros Childs' plaintive, unsteady vocal suggests feelings of sadness and loss, but the instrumentation which surrounds it is blanket-warm, with soaring fiddle and rich acoustic guitar to soften the bitter edge in the lyrics. Title track How I Long is a four minute distillation of everything great and unique about Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, a lovelorn elegy for the passing of another year. But another year will (hopefully) bring with it another Gorky's album, and that, if nothing else, is something to look forward to.

Tom Huddleston
CWAS #9 - Winter 2002

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