‘Oes gen ti le ?’ (‘Have you got a place ?’) is the latest single from Welsh folk artist Rhi Jorj, with a new album set to be released in March ‘27. It’s an expressive and emotive track that dances between intimate quietude and more expansive, romantic and stormy spaces – as if both performer and listener has stepped from hearth to heath in swift and dramatic, dream-like shifts. It’s a visual song, in the pictures it places in your mind, but also one of an ever-changing mood. It certainly captures the imagination.
Initial spartan folk-jazz arrangements build into something more swooning and emotive in nature as the song progresses – the repeated chorus sounding like an open-hearted epiphany found on a windswept moor. It reminded me in that way to some of the Wuthering Heights evoking moments found in Maja Lena’s back catalogue. But there’s also something mildly androgynous in the vocals, as if there are more than one voice being heard- a sonic signifier perhaps of the layered meanings at play, the beautiful lyricism of the Welsh language itself adding further depth and elegance to these complexities.
But it’s that chorus that set the images of the mind to work – the echoing, swirling sounds summoning up strange sirens of the soul. It works brilliantly. It feels, as I have said, like a stormy soundtrack to mysterious moorland escapades. Rhi Jorj’s desire to bottle ‘the free spirit of the Welsh mountains around me’ is a quarry most certainly captured.
Concepts of wandering are key to song’s conceit – a need for all to have a place to call home (or one at least that calls us to a place of meaning). ‘I’m a wanderer, I’m a drifter, I’m a stranger—I’m human’. She speaks of a duality – the places which mean the most to her but also of those without a home at all, and that need to view us all as equal. Perspectives shift and in doing so allow the song to pose uncomfortable questions about our ability to compartmentalise compassion. ‘I’ve been searching for a glimmer of kindness.’ she sings, ‘Do you have a place?’. I don’t think it’s a reach to suggest a further layer lurks beneath these words. It is clear that life has not been an easy path for Rhi Jorj, grappling as she has had to with sudden and difficult changes to her life’s previous trajectory, but she has certainly found a place of profound purpose in this music.
When the strings pour in at the songs coda – the effect is entrancing and deeply moving. It doesn’t use anything unduly over the top but it feels full and strangely magical, mirroring the duality of the songs through its sonic counterpoint to the more controlled, reserved verse sections. She is touring and has gathered some well deserved praise for her work to date; I hope both this single and the songs from the upcoming album gather yet more still. It would certainly be deserved.
I’m listening to this song on an early and windswept perch above the Severn estuary and I can just make out the shadowy shapes of the black mountains through the mists. This music feels like it’s echoing down from their heights to reach me here. It’s an absolute delight.
Written by M.A Welsh (Misophone)
