Gruff Rhys

Gruff Rhys

Candylion (Team Love)

Fitting that this new solo outing from Super Furry Animals frontman Rhys has landed on Conor Oberst's label's lap. Although you'd never confuse Rhys' everything-and-Bob-Dylan-Thomas muso-pop with Oberst's plaintively American sob, both are enamored of snaring love in what often seem willfully obscurantist songs. Candylion wisely sidesteps – for the most part – its songsmith's chiming but impenetrable mother tongue, opting instead for the queen's English, carried aloft (on the gorgeous title track, and on the epic closer, "Skylon!") by a sort of mellifluous Welsh rare beat that Yanks only ever hear in their dreams. Candylion's dozen tracks are charming, lovely, quiet little bits of hope and glory and melancholy that arrive from somewhere you've never been but always wished to inhabit. (Friday, March 16, Bourbon Rocks, 10:30pm)