These two tracks are possibly the most crystalline and pure expression of the album’s main theme – Bethan and Ynyr’s experiences of parenthood. They’re also good pop songs – so they felt like an appropriate AA-side.
1,2,3
Like much of the album, this song was initially composed by Bethan on the piano. It features Ynyr and Bethan on trumpets but also features Ioan Hefin, the man responsible for performing Welsh music’s greatest and most iconic trumpet solo in Eryr Wen’s Gloria Tyrd Adre. It’s a song about love and the feeling of trying to comprehend the magnitude of the love that you can feel for someone. It can relate to any form of love but in this instance it was written when their daughter turned 3 years old, with Bethan trying to articulate and comprehend the outpouring of love felt for a child and the hugeness of childbirth; the challenge, escalation, triumph, glory and the raw vulnerability of it all.
Lyrics:
How can something so small
Shake the earth, spark shivers?
When I feel it beating It’s not inside now, it’s outside
One, two, three Wise women were watching
My ancestral mothers, give me strength
A hole split in the sky
Learning a lesson about what value is
Fflachlwch Bach
An ode to their first-born child. The inspiration came as Bethan was trying to compose something on the piano with their daughter in her lap scribbling over the notes. There’s beauty in normality and the everyday, joy in an average day with small children. The star of the song also makes appearance with a keyboard solo and her self-penned line;
‘What are you waiting for? A song or what?
I’m going to begin one now so open your ears!’
Between the writing and release of the song, the arrival of their second child has brought fresh distractions, beats and chaos to the piano, thus writing himself a part in the song. Llyr Parri on drums, Elen Ifan on cello, Mari Morgan on Violin join Ynyr and Bethan for this one.
This shortened radio edit version is called ‘Fflachlwch Bach (Bach)’ whereas the full-length album version is Fflachlwch Bach – bach means small or little. Whilst it’s more fun than just calling it ‘(Radio Edit)’, it’s probably more confusing.
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