Give the band the name "Gorky's Zygotic Mynci" and the chances of anything more than a devoted cult throng decrease even further.

This past May—15 years after their formation in their native Wales, when the band members were just settling into adolescence—Gorky's Zygotic Mynci (Welsh for "Gorky's Embryonic Monkey") broke up. Thus ends the career of one of the most inspired of oddball pop bands, a collective that could be as bizarre as they were beguiling.

THE GREAT UNKNOWN: After 15 years, Welsh cult-rockers Gorky's Zygotic Mynci has called it quits.

When I first encountered a CD of theirs, I thoughtlessly assumed that only a 'shroom-addled hippie jam band could take on a moniker so hopelessly dopey. Imagine my surprise when the album in question, 2001's How I Long to Feel That Summer in My Heart, turned out to be a near-flawless work of melancholy and memory that still feels like one of the best albums of the 2000s.

Ten years before that career apex, however, Gorky's were a much different Mynci, slamming together fuzz guitars, proggy synths, cheery McCartney melodies, lyrics frequently sung in Welsh and goofball spoken-word interludes. The weirdest thing was that it was hard to tell if such tomfoolery was inspired by substances of an illicit nature, or if this was just what happened when enterprising teens discovered bands like The Soft Machine and The Move. When the early Gorky's formula worked, on unpredictable songs like "Merched Yn Neud Gwallt Eu Gilydd" and "Heart of Kentucky," the results were nigh-on irresistible.

By the time of their fourth album (and their first released in the U.S.), 1997's Barafundle, a slow but certain change had begun, as Gorky's meandering melodies now highlighted ample acoustic guitars and piano, not to mention bodhrans, shawms, hurdy-gurdys and crumhorns. If you're thinking "psych-folk" right now—well, yeah, just 10 years too soon.

The band's 1999-2001 stretch was their finest, yielding three deeply underrated releases: Spanish Dance Troupe (1999), The Blue Trees (2000) and How I Long. On these works, keyboardist-singer Euros Childs came into his own as a songwriter, specializing in angelic hymns that both mourned and celebrated passing seasons and the first flushes of love. It would have all seemed painfully twee, had the band not been such canny arrangers, infusing every song with the joyful sense of community they'd emanated from the beginning.

Earlier this year, before the band's split was made official, both Childs and secondary songwriter Richard James released solo albums, available here as imports. James' The Seven Sleepers Den (Boobytrap Records) highlights his fingerpicking guitar and whispery vocals (and a newfound aversion to apostrophes) on songs like "My Hearts on Fire" and "Headlong," but is probably too laid-back to appeal outside Gorky's following. Childs' Chops (Wichita Recordings) surrounds sparse, enigmatic compositions with brief, unfinished song-snippets and ideas. However, what first sounds frustratingly vague soon gains ballast. Childs is still writing melodies with the stark simplicity of piano exercises, and fitting them into a number of musical settings, from Sun Records to bossa nova to Kraftwerk. Most indelible are two slow-motion piano ballads, "Circus Time" and "Surf Rage," the former featuring Childs' sister, Gorky's violinist Megan Childs, with a solo that shows how much her aching, rustic tone contributed to the band's singularly unforgettable sound.

How I long to feel undertherock.blogspot.com in my heart.