Featured Track: Tom Emlyn "Starsick"

The team at REAL would like to introduce you to a new single released this past week by Tom Emlyn.

About the track:

There’s a particular kind of dizzy hope that hits when you’re chasing the horizon with a car full of gear, a head full of songs, and just enough belief to keep moving. Starsick lives right in that moment: the window down, the light pouring in, and the creeping suspicion that the dream might swallow you whole.

From the first lines, Tom frames the song like a film still. Rolling down a window becomes a portal, not into freedom, but into a strange, floating unreality: “taken in by the light” and “sucked out into space”. It’s funny in a dark way, but also painfully true to the experience of trying to be an “up-and-coming band” in a world that rarely makes room for the up-and-coming part.

What makes the writing land is how quickly it flips between the cosmic and the everyday. One second you’re out in the ether, the next you’re staring down first impressions, running out of rations, holes in your shoes. The chorus that repeated “starsick”, tightens like a mantra and a warning, less a hook than an anxious pulse. It’s not just the nausea of fame, it’s the vertigo of ambition itself.

About the artist:

Described by Adam Walton (BBC Radio Wales) as a "peripatetic musical genius", Tom Emlyn crafts honest, swirling songs. Tall tales laced with dark jokes and words that cut straight to the bone. 

His current solo work maps an alternative Southwalian landscape, a hallucinated community drawn from psychogeography built on local history. Anthropological observations shaping poetic lyrics and simple 60s-folk influenced melodies that explore what it means to belong to a place.

Bitterness, love, and humour peep through the cracks of this multi-layered, ethereal music. In the particular is contained the universal; Tom Emlyn's captivating songs explore the particular peculiarity of human experience in a self-produced exploration of the world. Whilst being rooted in indie/garage rock, Tom’s music is prolifically wide-ranging. His work delves into psychedelia, folk, jazz, blues, poetry, and ambient music. His distinctive style is characterised by soulful harmonica, lyrical guitar, and verbal dexterity, all brought together by a warm, lo-fi production style. 

He has released five albums between 2022-2025, whilst writing several more; in fact, God Is In The TV has called him 'Wales' most prolific musician'. Emlyn’s multi-instrumental talent sweeps into Cardiff-based bands Rainyday Rainbow and Papa Jupe's TC, earning Tom the description of "South Wales' resident musical chameleon" (ABABCB magazine). He has shared the stage with artists such as Gruff Rhys, Charlotte Church, Gwenno, Dafydd Iwan, and The Levellers.