(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
The Super Furry Animals were a quintet from Wales, part of the more retro wing of Britpop, but also among the most original "pop revivalists", following in the footsteps of
They Might Be Giants
(more than
Oasis).
From the EP Llanfairpwllgwyngyll (Ankst, 1995), their specialty has been 70s glam rock, arranged with an abundance of instruments but faithful to the theatrics of the era. The single God Show Me Magic blends the childlike boogie of the New York Dolls with the clownish flair of David Bowie.
The album Fuzzy Logic (Creation, 1996) is a continuous exercise in high-class necrophilia. The arrangements feature balalaika, violin, viola, cello, trumpet, saxophone, flute, trombone, along with keyboards and rock instruments. Fuzzy Birds is a ballad sung in the decadent register of Ziggy and arranged in the kitschiest way (including a trumpet fanfare and a flute march). The insipid nursery rhyme of Frisbee, driven by an embarrassing guitar riff, comes straight out of a variety show. But the peak of parodic comedy is reached in Bad Behavior, a wax museum where Mick Jaggers agonizing register, the hysterical guitar of the Sex Pistols, a comic Todd Rundgren synthesizer, and an endless Hawkwind-like jam/bacchanal meet.
When the band abandons the poses and focuses solely on melody, it becomes even more grotesque, like a Frank Zappa imitating the Beatles, as in the vocal harmonies and cello of Hometown Unicorn, or in the Mediterranean ballad of Gathering Moss, which spills into a waltz. The elaborate pop of the Jellyfish Kiss (a neo-pop group that had much to teach Britpop) triumphs in Something For The Weekend, with echoes of the Beatles, Hollies, and Kinks. Singer Gruff Rhys performs miraculous feats of transformation amid this forest of references.
Even when the combination fails (a horrendous mutation of All The Young Dudes by Mott The Hoople appears in If You Don't Want Me To Destroy You, and the entire second half exists only to justify the album format instead of an EP), the band is far less boring than the average British act.
Announced by the singles Herman and International Language Of Screaming, Radiator (Creation, 1997) is a faded photocopy of its predecessor. Once again, decadent inflections dominate, and beat-era citations abound. And once again, much of the album is filler trasha bad habit of British bands. In the end, the impression remains of an epigonal group, already tired after just two seconds of their career. Provincial Jellyfish. The singles are: Hermann Loves Pauline, The International Language of Screaming, Play it Cool, Demons, followed the next year by Ice Hockey Hair.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
For those who can digest more of this soup,
Out Spaced (Creation, 1998) is a collection of rarities.
Guerrilla (Flydaddy, 1999) is a superb, albeit involuntary, parody of
their own sound, so refined to sound artificial. Songs such as
Northern Lites and Do or Die
are perfect summaries of everything they have done so far.
Fire In My Heart is cosmic pop.
Mwng (Flydaddy, 2000),
sung in Welsh, was recorded live in studio. This "lo-fi" version of the band is quite effective in delivering the deranged epos of Dygioni and Sarn Helen, and Gruff Rhys has the time of his life singing them.
The double disc Rings Around The World (Epic, 2001), their greatest
commercial achievement,
avails itself of a sleek, lush production that confuses the
issue of what the music is all about.
It was released in Britain with great fanfare. Remove the hype, and all is
left is the usual dose of pop refrains and Pet Sounds-style arrangements
(notably the power riffs and angelic harmonies of Rings Around The World)
plus a few
diligent imitations of Radiohead
(the whispered chamber lied Alternative View From Vulcan Street,
the slow, hypnotic and sensual instrumental A Touch Sensitive).
The experiments are amateurish at best, like the way
Receptacle for the Respectable mutates multiple times,
from Mexican street fanfare to pummeling/growling death-metal,
ot the way the lengthy
CSN&YNo Sympathy
turns into glitch music.
All in all, perhaps the album strikes a chord when
Juxtaposed With U merges
easy-listening soundtracks of the 1960s and orchestral disco of the 1970s,
one of its lightest moments.
Ditto for Run Christian Run, a sleepy hybrid of
Morricone-style Western-movie elegy and Eagles-style country shuffle.
The album's intentions are good, but it has too much fluff, including
to the yawn-inducing
lounge ballad It's Not The End of the World
and the orchestral ballad Presidential Suite.
It sounds like the album of musicians that try desperately to sound interesting.
In fact, it was one of their least interesting albums.
Phantom Power (XL, 2003) finds a better balance than its predecessor
between light, breezy Brit-pop and lush, ambitious arrangements.
For a band that spent its career to imitate Pet Sounds, it is no
small achievement to have finally produced an album that sounds like
the Beach Boys transported to the digital age.
The High Llamas' Sean O'Hagan plays
Brian Wilson
here (all the string sections are arranged by him) and no wonder that so many songs evoke the Beach Boys
if not Simon & Garfunkel or
Crosby Stills & Nash,
from the six-minute soft vocal carousel of Piccolo Snare
to the psychedelic lullaby Cityscape Skybaby
to Venus and Serena.
But the most captivating numbers are probably the ones that violate the norm:
the anthemic Liberty Belle (with a refrain reminiscent of Bob Dylan's Like A Rollingstone),
the swinging Golden Retriever (with boogie guitar and gospel vocals),
the pounding rave-up of Out Of Control.
On the other hand the languid singalong Hello Sunshine,
the bossanova-rock of Valet Parking,
the reggae shuffle The Undefeated, and the lazy country-rock ballad
Sex War And Robots embody the congenital limitations of the Super Furry
Animals, but, luckily, here they are the exception and not the rule.
Enhanced with a couple of moody experiments
(notably the seven-minute ambient-techno closer Slow Life)
and a discrete use of dance beats and electronic sounds throughout,
this album fulfills whatever ambitions was hidden behind the mess of
Rings Around The World.
The double-disc
Phantom Phorce (Sony, 2004) is a remix album.
Songbook (XL, 2005) collects the singles.
The sci-fi concept
Love Kraft (Rough Trade, 2005), featuring string arrangements by Sean O'Hagan (of High Llamas) and a 100-unit Catalan choir, boasts the bold (for them) choral overture of Zoom and the
bold (for them) arrangements of Laser Beam.
But Walk You Home and Cabin Fever mix the same ingredients to
obtain something that is not all that different from lounge music.
Gruff Rhys debuted solo with the stripped-down
Yr Atal Genhedlaeth (2005), a collection of generic power-pop muzak sung in Welsh, followed by Candylion (2007), a more regular collection
of eerily-arranged psychedelic-pop songs in the old style of Super Furry Animals
(Candylion, reminiscent of Smokey Robinson's Tracks of My Tears,
the ambient pop of Lonesome Words,
the 14-minute Bob Dylan-esque fresco Skylon).
In the meantime,
keyboardist Cian Ciaran launched Acid Casuals, that debuted with
Omni (2006),
and drummer Dafydd Ieuan formed the Peth with actor Rhys Ifans (an original
member of Super Funny Animals).
If Love Kraft had shown a modest inclination towards a more "progressive"
approach,
the Super Furry Animals returned to concise pop immediacy on Hey Venus (2007),
an album that lazingly surveys the standards of the catchy ditty (from
Merseybeat to bubblegum to punk-pop) and occasionally delivers a song that
may actually stick for more than one day
(Show Your Hand and Into The Night).
Stainless Style (2008), credited to Neon Neon, was a collaboration between Gruff Rhys and USA dj Boom Bip intended as a concept album about John DeLorean, a futuristic designer of cars, and crafted as a tribute to the music of the 1980s.
Dark Days/Light Years (Rough Trade, 2009) contains the
eight-minute exotic-psychedelic pastiche Cardfiff in the Sun
but is generally more ebullient
than usual, letting the rockers prevail over the ballads.
Hence the prog-rock fantasia Crazy Naked Girls, that mutates from
funk-soul a` la Prince to pop-metal a` la
Guns N' Roses,
the roaring pounding Inconvenience, that decays into an old-fashioned space-rock jam,
the cool boogie Mt,
etc.
The band is still all over the spectrum, from the
pop-soul easy-listening muzak White Socks Flip Flops,
to the polyrhythmic and dissonant The Very Best Of Neil Diamond.
The ten-minute Pric, that blends
Neu-esque motorik rhythm
and a ghostly cacophonous instrumental coda,
is as fanciful as the Beatles' Revolution.
The high-brow and pompous tone of the album can use the
lively march-like singalong Inaugural Trams, probably the one and only
standout.
The vocal harmonies a` la Beach Boys and CSN&Y are largely a memory of the past,
but it's not clear what asset has replaced them.
Gruff Rhys mocked the mellow pop music of the 1960s on
Hotel Shampoo (2011) and composed the amateurish soundtrack
Terror of Cosmic Loneliness (2012).
Neon Neon returned with Praxis Makes Perfect (2013).
Rhys' later albums include:
American Interior
(2014),
Babelsberg
(2018),
Pang!
(2019),
(Don't) Welcome the Plague as a Blessing: The Babelsberg Basement Files
(2020),
Seeking New Gods
(2021),
Sadness Sets Me Free
(2024),
Dim Probs
(2025). He also composed
several film soundtracks.
