Carwyn Ellis

★★★ Across The Water AGATI. CD/DL

Prolific Welshman’s stripped-down first solo LP. A world away from Carwyn Ellis’s Latin-tinged work with – amongst so many others –Rio 18, the more psychedelic Colorama or as a touring Pretender, Across The Water is a simple affair, albeit with complex subject matter. Overwhelmingly just Ellis’s croon and his piano – in four cases, most evocatively The Boy On The Beach, it’s just piano – it’s an understated tribute to refugees and the journeys they take, particularly on the treacherous slog from north Africa to southern Europe. Along the way, there’s joy of sorts on the beautiful Thank God (as in “thank god I’m alive”), but quiet anger on Seventy Four (“74 bodies all in a line…”) and dislocated rue on the cover of fellow Welshman The Gentle Good’s Bound For Lampedusa. A change of pace would have been a boon, but, as it stands,

Across The Water is a document of our times. John Aizlewood