At some point in the past, after Britpop and after the New Wave of New Wave, and around the same time as the New Acoustic movement, there was a boom in Welsh groups. I suppose there had always been great bands from Wales but, in 1999 or so, people started to notice for once. No doubt helped by the success of Super Furry Animals, Catatonia, and Stereophonics, bands like Melys, Topper, Big Leaves, and Derrero achieved some levels of success. With a champion like the late John Peel helping out, the ruminative psychedelia of Derrero got a lot of attention.
The band released three albums between 1997 and 2002, and reunited for a live show or two after that. But 2020's Time Lapse, out now via Recordiau Cae Gwyn Records, is the first record they've offered up in nearly two decades. The music within is familiarly appealing, and further proof that Derrero never should have gone away, though Ash Cooke has been keeping busy with his various projects in the years since 2002. What's here on Time Lapse sounds as effortlessly likable as nearly anything these fellas touched in years past.
"Feed the Flashback" gently revs up as it pursues its mid-tempo pleasures, while the excellent "Forecasts" marries bits of fuzzy feedback with harmonies and melodies that suggest anything from Syd to The Soft Boys. Elsewhere, "Rolling Past Vistas" is glorious, pure sunshine-dappled pop like something from Seventies radio, the hooks here redolent of American stuff from our West Coast, while "Space Suction", like a few cuts here on Time Lapse, mixes up some noisy bits with the straightforward harmonies.
Time Lapse is largely bright and tuneful, with the portions that are a bit riskier in sonic terms, like the rough parts of "Flotsam & Jetsam", paired up nicely next to the lovelier portions of the record, like the High Llamas-aping "Blue Mutations", one of the real highlights here. Time Lapse doesn't entirely re-invent the wheel, but it re-affirms the strengths of this band, and it sounds like they'd never left. I suppose that's what we want? Not to be taken back to 2002 but to be given music that charms in the same way, with the same sort of wonderfulness that charmed Peel and others so many years ago. In that sense, Time Lapse is a reassuring record, and one which reminds you why you were right to get jazzed about Derrero in the first place.
Time Lapse is out now via Recordiau Cae Gwyn.
More details on Derrero via the band's official Facebook page.
[PHoto: Derrero]