We all know that Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys is a bit of an oddball. After all, his recent work includes a "psychedelic western road movie" called Seperado! and a collaborative album with a VCR repairman entitled The Terror of Cosmic Loneliness. With this track record, it doesn't come as too much of a surprise that the singer's new solo album, Hotel Shampoo, is named after his obsessive tendency to pilfer soaps and shampoos from hotel rooms.
Hotel Shampoo is due out February 14 in the UK via Ovni/Turnstile. To coincide with the announcement, the singer has unveiled an art exhibit at the Chapter Arts Center in Cardiff, Wales. The exhibit shows off his massive collection of toiletries picked up in hotels around the world.
"In 1995, I began touring the world industrially as a pop musician," he said. "A gleaming new cosmos of hotel accommodation opened up for me and in an instant I was seduced by the free product available in the rooms. I hoarded these objects in a rush of mild kleptomania. Every room in my house began to amass these plastic bottles and various hotel-related things from every continent on earth (except Antarctica)."
See the album tracklist below. Keep scrolling down to see Rhys's hotel toiletries collection and hear him explain a bit about the art exhibit. Also, check out the album's first single, "Shark Ridden Waters," down there below as well.
Hotel Shampoo:
1. "Shark Ridden Waters"
2. "Honey All Over"
3. "Sensations in the Dark"
4. "Vitamin K"
5. "Take A Sentence"
6. "Conservation Conversation"
7. "Sophie Softly"
8. "Christopher Columbus"
9. "Space Dust"
10. "At the Heart of Love"
11. "Patterns of Power"
12. "If We Were Words (We Would Rhyme)"
13. "Rubble Rubble"
Hotel Shampoo is due out February 14 in the UK via Ovni/Turnstile. To coincide with the announcement, the singer has unveiled an art exhibit at the Chapter Arts Center in Cardiff, Wales. The exhibit shows off his massive collection of toiletries picked up in hotels around the world.
"In 1995, I began touring the world industrially as a pop musician," he said. "A gleaming new cosmos of hotel accommodation opened up for me and in an instant I was seduced by the free product available in the rooms. I hoarded these objects in a rush of mild kleptomania. Every room in my house began to amass these plastic bottles and various hotel-related things from every continent on earth (except Antarctica)."
See the album tracklist below. Keep scrolling down to see Rhys's hotel toiletries collection and hear him explain a bit about the art exhibit. Also, check out the album's first single, "Shark Ridden Waters," down there below as well.
Hotel Shampoo:
1. "Shark Ridden Waters"
2. "Honey All Over"
3. "Sensations in the Dark"
4. "Vitamin K"
5. "Take A Sentence"
6. "Conservation Conversation"
7. "Sophie Softly"
8. "Christopher Columbus"
9. "Space Dust"
10. "At the Heart of Love"
11. "Patterns of Power"
12. "If We Were Words (We Would Rhyme)"
13. "Rubble Rubble"