HEDFAN

While Brân's sophomore effort is not as strong as their debut overall, having abandoned almost all folk inspiration in favour of hard acidic rock already past its time, it does contain a couple of their best tracks,

Clearly the winds were shifting, and even several jazzier and countrified tunes seemed half hearted. Not surprisingly, they remained most appealing when staying closer to their melodic origins, in the lovely ballad "Dyddiau Dwys", and the masterful closer, which possesses the same spine-tingling hallmarks of PERERIN's ultimate songs, particularly in the lead guitar outro and the alternating quiet and more assertive sections. The best of the rockers are "Dewch Ynghyd", which has a rudimentary RUNRIG style to it (and predates RUNRIG's recorded works), and especially "Hapus Awr", which works in fits and starts from anticipatory strummed electric guitar to catchy hard rock tune, with the voices fitted to the underlying rhythms rather than the reverse.

In spite of mounting evidence that Brân was decomposing into barely recognizable remnants at this point, their ability to wrench every emotional essence out of the best cuts manages to salvage a 2.5 star rating that I can only round up.