Song of the day (7th June) -Griff Lynch – “Kombucha”.

Hi hi hi people! 🙂 

 

Do I have news for you! 😆 Griff Lynch is making music again, YAAAAYYYY! But first, let’s recap a bit for clarity maybe, and explain why I’m making such a big deal out of it.

 

Those of you who have been familiar with my blog for a while might recall that, since February this year, I’ve had a new faza peep, which is Griff Lynch. Btw if you’re new here and don’t know what a faza is, and find this post confusing, you might want to click that link as it might just explain some things for you.

 

So far, I’ve shared one song by Griff’s band Yr Ods and one of his solo singles as part of my Song of the Day series. The initial peak of this faza is still going strong for me. However, one thing I’d never mentioned on my blog regarding Griff, and my faza on him, was that he’d actually been MIA from making music for a couple of years. This, to be honest, I found quite concerning.

 

For one thing, it’s hard to sustain a faza long-term when your faza peep is basically inactive. But also, I was just plain worried because I care about my faza peeps. To me, as someone who just got to know Griff and his work on a somewhat deeper level this year, it seemed like he’d been very active and doing all kinds of things, only to suddenly go virtually radio silent for 2-3 years. I thought he maybe just got burnt out and quit, deciding to get a normal mediocre job instead. 😀 While I could totally understand that, it would nonetheless be such a flipping shame!

 

So when I’d heard nothing new about him or from him in those few months, a large part of my brain gradually came to terms with the fact that he’s probably not coming back any time soon. . Well, now imagine my sheer surprise and shock when, two weeks ago, I learned that Griff IS coming back! I’d been so sure that it wouldn’t happen, at least not while this faza of mine was still the dominant one, that at first I thought I had to be hallucinating! 😀 I just couldn’t believe it!

 

Perhaps you’d be inclined to say, gentle reader, that I was overreacting. After all, I have only had this faza for less than half a year, and it’s not like he’d been absolutely, completely quiet all those three years. He wrote and directed a Welsh-language short film and last year released two songs with his siblings – Casi and Lewys Wyn – as a trio called Main Man. But nonetheless, for the most part, we heard very little about Griff during that time, especially in the last five months. This gave me the impression that he wasn’t doing much anymore. So for someone with my perspective, it felt like waking up from an unpleasant dream – disturbing, but not quite a nightmare – where things aren’t as they should be, and in the dream, you know they’ll never be normal again. Then you wake up and realise, phew! It was just a dream! How cool that I woke up and it’s not like that for real! You get this rush of relief and happiness and silently vow never to take this thing, the thing that was off in the dream, for granted again. Not sure how understandable this analogy is going to be for most people, but I get dreams like that quite often, from which it’s a sheer pleasure to wake up, and this experience has been kind of similar.

 

So, despite not knowing Griff all that well prior to last February, it feels like that break was longer than three years. So his comeback feels like a big deal to me, deserving of as much fuss as possible. Like the fuss Enya fans make whenever she releases a new album after a decade, after everyone had decided that this time, she surely must have ran out of ideas and is not going to release anything new. Like the fuss all the traditional folkies of England were making when Shirley Collins came back to singing after 40 years or so – something that no one would have expected to happen. – Like the fuss around Elvis Presley after his seven-year hiatus… Lol I can’t come up with anymore examples. But, yeah, I’m so relieved! Just try to tell me again that my defensive pessimism doesn’t work! 

 

Last week, Griff has released his first single after the hiatus, and later this year he will release his first album, which I am really looking forward to. He is also going to play some gigs again. I’ve seen that he’s set to perform during Tafwyl, an annual Welsh-language music festival held in Cardiff, as well as Sŵn, which is also a Cardiff-based festival. 

 

I want to share Griff’s new single, Kombucha, with you. It’s been a week since it came out, but whenever my faza peeps release something new, I always need some time with it, even if it’s just a single, before I share it on the blog, assuming that I decide to do it at all. Just to get a better idea of it and explore how I feel about it. Today (or rather yesterday, because I started writing this before midnight 😀 ), the video for the song came out, too. Unfortunately it’s completely lost on me because I obviously can’t see it, but I figured it’s a good time to finally feature the song here. Especially since it doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of attention so far, which is SO unfair! The whole of Wales should be talking about this, in my view. Or maybe they are, but they do so on social media, on which I don’t exist, so I don’t know. To my knowledge, it seems like I’m the first person writing a post about this song in English?… Which feels weird, absurd, and intimidating to think about, but it’s yet another thing that proves my relatively recent conclusion that I always like to make things more challenging for myself just because. 

 

Needless to say, I like this song. It’s slightly different from Griff’s previous solo singles. Musically, it has string arrangements created by Owain Llwyd, as Griff told the Welsh-language music website Klust,, he wanted to have a live element to some of the songs. Lyrically, as far as I can tell (I’m a Welsh learner as you know and don’t understand all of his songs perfectly yet) this is Griff’s happiest, most lighthearted song to date, even though not without some subtle underlying anxiety in my perception.

 

Those of you who have followed my blog and the Song of the Day series for a while, or those who know me, likely know by now that I am one of the first people in the world to appreciate a thoroughly depressing song, but happy songs are just as cool. I especially like it when my faza peeps write or sing happy songs because there’s a decent chance they come from a happy place, and I obviously like it when my faza peeps are happy. And it is so insanely catchy and sticks to your brain hahaha!

 

In the aforementioned post from Klust, Griff was quoted as saying he wrote the melody and the riffs for this song in 2021, a few days after the Green Man festival, which was the first festival in Wales after the lockdown. So the song captures some of that euphoric feeling of people being able to experience this kind of thing again after a really long time. It’s a really fun song and very deliciously and skilfully produced, but that has always been the case with Griff’s music. 

 

The lyrics are, as Griff said: “a tongue-in-cheek look at healthy living consumerism, and the background concerns of getting older, and thus buying into the fun”. This instantly makes me think of my healthy lifestyle-obsessed Mum, who has gone through all sorts of phases in her healthy life and nutrition journey. Curiously though, I don’t think she’s ever had a kombucha phase. Now I doubt she will, because just a couple weeks ago she turned carnivore, which she’s feeling very well as and isn’t likely to quit anytime soon. Kombucha isn’t exactly a carnivore thing. Still, I think most of my Polish compatriots, carnivore or otherwise, will agree that fermented foods and drinks are essential if you want to stay healthy.

 

As for me personally, some of you might remember how I once wrote that my three favourite drinks are kefir, kefir and kefir. Btw why has no one made a song in praise of kefir?! Or maybe someone did but I just happen not to be aware of it. I guess I’ll go looking once I’m finished with this post (or maybe not, I think I’ll follow all the normal people to Sleepland; kefir can wait). Maybe I’ll even find something good (or weird) enough to feature on my blog in the future. 😀

 

Kefir is very healthy, especially if you have your own kefir grains and make your own kefir, my Mum used to do that in the past, and it boggles my brain that so many people in English-speaking countries just haven’t heard of it. It always used to give me severe culture shock when I first started writing with people in English, and they’d say they’d never had kefir or even didn’t know what it was. They don’t know what they’re missing! Although it definitely seems to be this kind of thing that you either love or hate, always with a passion. 😀 It is so refreshing, the best probiotic that exists, and if you’re not particularly hungry but feel like you should eat something, it can totally work as a light but nourishing meal. Another, slightly less healthy Polish fermented drink that I love to have occasionally is podpiwek, made from grain coffee, hops, yeast, water and sugar.

 

But I’ve actually never had kombucha. I remember the first time I heard about it, and someone told me what it is, my initial reaction was something superficial along the lines of: “Yeast tea, ewwwww!” Which I now realise makes no sense, because with that logic you could just as well think of podpiwek as “yeast coffee” or something. Just hearing about what it’s made of may not sound very enticing to someone who’s never had it, but in practice, it doesn’t taste like “yeast coffee” in my view. Now that Griff has made a song about kombucha, I think it means I have to try it. After all, that’s the whole point of fazas – developing, gaining new experiences, and all that. – So here’s a new one waiting for me. 😀 

 

But, what I think is really cool is that Griff said that the real reason for writing a song about kombucha is just that he wanted an excuse to use the word, solely because of how it sounds. As a logophile, I obviously really like the reasoning behind that. It’s quite a hilarious word. The person from whom I’d first heard about kombucha pronounced it the Polish way phonetically, and I remember thinking that the word totally didn’t sound like a drink but made me think of some giant, noisy steam vehicle. But I dare say kefir sounds better. And it rhymes with zephyr, whereas I don’t think kombucha has any intuitive rhymes in English. 

 

Interestingly, I surprised myself again this year because I was able to translate this song. I’m quite sure it’s not a particularly good translation and likely has some mistakes or jarring bits, and it wasn’t exactly easy, but it is a translation, and so it can give you even more of an idea of what the song is about. I have marked the lines in case of which I have even the slightest doubt that I might not have gotten everything correctly (which is almost all of the lines in the verses as you can see) so that you may take them with a grain of salt (though that probably won’t taste too well with the kombucha).

 

The video for the song was also directed by Griff. 

 

Kombucha, it makes me feel great, 

A very tasty remedy for a dry tongue, 

Bacteria that extend life, 

And help me keep a clear mind. 

 

As I grow older, 

Difficulties are easier to flee, [?] 

It’s difficult to sum up, [?] 

What [do?] I do to avoid the fears 

 

Breathe through the nose, 

Lotion on the skin. 

 

Kombucha, it makes me feel great, 

A very tasty remedy for a dry tongue, 

Bacteria that extend life, 

And help me keep a clear mind. 

 

The ideas, 

Are half-baked without the plate, 

To be served on, [?] 

So as they are being devoured [?] 

 

By the teeth [grind?] of the day, 

Remember, there will be a tomorrow. ]?] 

 

Kombucha makes me feel absolutely great, 

A very tasty remedy for a dry tongue, 

Bacteria that extend life, 

And help me keep a clear mind. 

 

I will drink kombucha throughout my life, 

Keep my gut from hurting, 

My stomach is fizzing with pleasure, 

And my innermost heart is dancing in relief.