Super Furry Animals

1. it's their best album
2. it's their only consistently excellent album
3. it's the closest in spirit to rings.

they're a very good band, but i feel their album output isn't quite as good as it should be. everything except radiator has a few half-assed non-songs that could have been either developed better, or dropped entirely (Guerrilla in particular). 5 albums in and i'm still thinking they have great "potential". hope they deliver a masterpiece next time out...

Anyone heard it? News? Better than Guerilla? Really? C'mon!

Worth noting that, except for "Golden Retriever", this one deals with the darkest subject matter the most often, mainly focusing on war. Also, "Sex, War and Robots" is my favourite song of the year so far.

Sex War and Robots is obviously the best song title ever. i fully expect this song to explain the universe.

not many things in 2003 would make me happier than a great super furries album. ah....

"joining the periphery/banished to the periphery/to join the periphery/the price to pay for all who stray" (music as divisive force)

"take your homestead and then head down south/leave your heritage in the designated space/what was once home is gray matter" (war)

"as dawn breaks/i'm an abandonded ruin/no sight or sound/or bells upon the hour" (death of rural communities) (it's impossibly sad!)

"this is the location that we chose/to plant the deepest root/and this is the location that has the heaviest blood/which threatens to drown us" (personal + cultural inertia)

the whole album is about things ending isn't it? relationships, friendships, communities, lives. admittedly the music makes me pretty happy, but then i can just enjoy the melodies and not have to understand the lyrics every time i listen!

-- enjoy bell woods

Is this in the UK? I know the contract was up with Sony/BMG after Love Kraft but doubt they would let them leave, maybe the band wants a change. Sony UK went out of their way to sign them after they went away from Sony after the Creation Records fold. Mwng proved to be a pretty big seller and Sony resigned them.

DANGER MOUSE?

http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/story/0,,2267024,00.html

Who would be your fantasy collaborator?

DM: I know his: Sly.

C-L: I would love to work with Sly Stone. First I would like to meet with him and talk to him and kick it with him. Then maybe it would spill over into doing some music. I don't think he would have it any other way. I think Danger would have loved to have done something with Portishead.

DM: I understand why he says that, but it's not true. I was just very, very influenced by them. You can't take any of those people and move them around. How I work with people is way different, and they wouldn't be Portishead if I was to do something with them. Right now I'd love to work with the Super Furry Animals.

Bad, bad idea.

You think so? I just wish they'd drop the straight pop, and their last two producers haven't helped them out with that.

I'm not a Danger Mouse apologist, but SFA could heavily benefit from a Danger Mouse production.

why do people like dangermouse again?

He invented the remix

he turned one of the worst sfa songs ever into something listenable, so that's an achievement

also Gnarls Barkley has good production. (It's overrated, sure)

Danger Flat

Mcr Ritz on the morrow

won't be tweetin'

Gruff Rhys's movie:

http://vimeo.com/9701428

So SFA were making an album with Charles Hazlewood:

http://s4c.co.uk/clic/e_level2.shtml?programme_id=230650065

For Americans (subtitled): http://rapidshare.com/files/373892962/SFA_-_Super_Furry_Clasurol.mov

Seems like this could be their "magnum opus" if it were to ever get off the ground. Kind of ridiculous in the very best Super Furry way possible.

Script by Martin Carr!

Yeah, the script is kind of ridiculous at times. The doc. doesn't do much of a good job at telling you what's going on with this project. I'm assuming it might've been aborted.

So Cian's got an album coming out in May and surprisingly sounds not one bit like his Acid Casuals stuff and exactly like a continuation of songs like Cabin Fever and Carbon Dating...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kzdLgRujiE

None of y'all were hungry for a little taste of SFA?

Love Guerilla but haven't listened to any others in a very long time!

A great album. The following albums seem to shed more and more fans the closer we get to the present.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjwb4N7KnKU

Yes yes very nice

That Cian stuff sounded pretty much as I expected it to be. It's nice, but it doesn't get me excited and I'm struggling to say much more about it. SFA will always be a special band for me, but I've felt less and less inclined to listen to them or get excited about them in recent years, collectively and individually. That run of albums they did from 1997-2007 is definitely worth of great praise, but maybe I've just moved on.

I think it's nice. ^_^

You must've just outgrown SFA then because Cian's really only contributed a handful of songs to SFA, which is something that happened fairly recently. I think it's a nice song. Sometimes that's all songs need to be. His voice is strong, the piano playing is interesting and the harmonizing on the first part of the track has an experimental bent to it.

I'm not sure where else he would've taken this. I see one of his coming songs is called "Till I Die," so I guess he's not going to throw any break beats or zany sounds on any of the tracks.

At least they aren't broken up. Cian's first tune was on Guerrilla...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6S83iTsVBg

I take it no one likes this band anymore. Must be why they've been on extended break.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvA0hLdAD2Q

Woah-oh woah bowl me over

Dark Days was my favourite SFA album since Guerilla. Easy.

yeah Dark Days was great. Probably my second favorite at this point, right after Rings Around The World.

I want these guys to continue making music as a group.

I loved it too. It actually got me excited for their future, which makes this unfortunate hiatus all the more disappointing. I felt they regained a vitality they were losing by relying too heavily on ornate orchestration and prog rock cliches.

A couple of very good moments in 'The Very Best Of Neil Diamond' and 'White Socks/Flip Flops', and possibly even 'Pric' at a push, but ultimately a collection of extremely under-written songs with lyrics that sound as if they were written in a cigarette break, and none of the production depth of their earlier work, which means it wears thin very quickly on repeated listens.

I suppose it is mildly enjoyable in places, but compared to what this band used to be capable of it's just simply not good enough.

I like the entire catalog, as it squares up with most of what I love about music. Guerrilla still my favorite but that's because I think it one of the ten best albums of its decade.

That's how I feel, man. I feel in love with them because I find their music extremely rewarding as far as replayability is concerned. There is so much going on under the surface--controlled chaos, so to speak. Now that they're older they're beginning to get rid of their more stoned and drugged-out sensibilities, but I'm enjoying their transition into skilled, controlled musicians that know how to utilize texture in their songs and seem to actually know how to play their instruments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4e_WYNEPqM&feature=fvst

All that out of that way, it's hard to say they've ever topped their most innocent days.

First single from Cian's new album:

http://soundcloud.com/strangetown-records/sets/cian-ciaran-1/

Very Love Kraft-ian...

Cian's vocal melody at first pretty much immediately reminded me of The Peth's 'Stonefinger', and the backing with the spare drumming and spare piano chords reminded me a lot of John Lennon's 'Mother'. The chorus is very reminiscent of George Harrison's mid '70s solo work (I'm thinking something off maybe 'Living In The Material World' or 'Extra Texture'), although it does seem to have the usual subtle flavours of ELO/The Beach Boys in there. I can understand the vibe that he's going for.

Ultimately though, I found this track crushingly dull and very unexciting. It seems to just plod and plod, and the chorus doesn't really give it enough of a lift out of that rut. It's also quite unconvincing; it's clear it's designed and deliberately crafted to be this 'beautiful' piece of music, but I honestly didn't feel anything listening to that. It was kind of just 'there'.

I like it. The bg vocals are interesting, the production is dense, the lyrics are cheesy in a great, bombastic way and the drumming is good as always. What can I say, I'm a fan boy. Hope I find out those are some Sean O'Hagan strings layered under there so I can live up to my name.

Meh. I wish I could say that there was something interesting about it, but I can't. The background vocals just sounded like the kind of standard, business-as-usual background vocals one would expect from a member of Super Furry Animals; well put together, yes, but all members of that band can do this kind of thing in the sort of state of sleep that this track is threatening to put me in. It doesn't sound like there's anything incredibly flash going on in the drumming department, either. Granted, the song doesn't call for anything but a basic 'Imagine'-esque backbeat, so in that sense the drumming works. However, it's not something that I would drag out and say 'Hey! listen to the drumming on this!'. These are minor complaints, though. The major complaint that I have with it is that it's not particularly very gripping: it meanders, it plods, there's very little in there that approaches a hook... and this is the first single!? It's probably fair to say that if the rest of the album is in the same vein as the tracks that have already been posted, then I'm really going to find this album a bit of a tedious, samey listen.

I did have to allow myself a little smile at that opening lyric, though: "Whatever happened to all the people who gave a fuck?", especially knowing that SFA's audience has been dwindling at a rapid rate since at least 2005. I suppose there'll always be a small portion of real hardcore fans (I loathe the term 'fanboys') that will passionately carry on devouring SFA's product both collectively and individually regardless of whether it measures up to the heights of their earlier work; and admittedly, there is nothing wrong with this at all and I'm not going to sit here and say that people are wrong for doing so. The band (and by extension, the solo careers of the people in the band) have become part of the identities of these fans, and I suppose there's a comfort in buying a record by your favourite artist(s) at a late stage in their career and knowing pretty much that what you're going to get is going to be something that is, at the very least, pleasing to the ear of a fan.

In my case, the music of both the band and the solo careers of those in the band just doesn't seem to have the same 'power' or 'hold' over me that it used to. I've pretty much exhausted all of the 'old' stuff through extensive listening over the years, and the very recent stuff just doesn't impress me to the level that their older work did. Also, at the same time, my listening tastes have been gradually shifting away from the type of music Super Furry Animals make both as a collective and individually. I genuinely find myself getting my kicks from other records by other bands that give me the same 'high' as Super Furry Animals used to, even if these other bands/other records don't sound anything like Super Furry Animals or their solo work. It happens. The group of people behind Super Furry Animals had a good 11-12 years of absolute devout fandom from me, which is a remarkably long time. There's a lot of bands that *don't* inspire absolute devout fandom from people for such a length of time. Even the biggest bands in the world have a revolving door of people that become hardcore fans who either gradually fall off or find their fandom cooling after a few years and move onto something else. Again, it happens. It's really as simple as that.

That's pretty much exactly how I've felt about They Might Be Giants, and they won me over again. Maybe there's some hope for SFA. Then again, my most recent SFA album is Rings Around the World.

That's pretty much exactly how I've felt about They Might Be Giants, and they won me over again. Maybe there's some hope for SFA. Then again, my most recent SFA album is Rings Around the World.

― That's a pretty funky dance, Garfield. Show me how you do it. (frogbs), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 4:34 PM (45 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I mean these things happen too! There's a possibility that in the future they may release exactly the right record at the right time for me, or in many years to come I'll come back to one of their older records with a fresh ear and I'll be like "hey, fuckin' hell! this is exactly what I want to hear!", and they'll win me back over and I'll get enthusiastic about the band/their solo stuff all over again. It's difficult to say when this could happen, but if it did happen I can't imagine I'd complain about it. For the moment though, I've definitely hit a bit of a brick wall/got a bit tired/got a bit bored with it all and I'm definitely getting my musical 'kicks', as it were, elsewhere.

Ha, I was thinking pretty much in these general terms myself, that they went from a band who meant a hell of a lot to me to a band that just lost me a bit. But yeah, maybe it'll come back, or maybe it's just me.

I kind of felt like I was getting bored with SFA for Lovecraft and Hey Venus, but they won me back with Dark Days/Light Years

I'm hoping they make another album at some point

So, about Cian's new song... what do the rest of y'all think?

http://soundcloud.com/e-l-k-1/gulp-game-love

Guto's thing. Might be a bit more of a change for you, Turrican.

Cian's album is fantastic. The lyrics are cheesy/heavy handed, but the songwriting is strong. I find the album more memorable than Gruff's last one, honestly. Strange.

...and so we're coming up to nearly the five year mark since Super Furry Animals last released an album, and it's been over ten years since their last album that I could say was universally acclaimed by critics and fans alike (Phantom Power). I personally think that it would be incredibly sad if Dark Days/Light Years turned out to be their swan song. Remember what happened to Gorky's Zygotic Mynci when they went on hiatus after Sleep/Holiday and then broke up three years later? I understand that they're busy with all of their solo projects (hardly any of which have actually done much for me), but a hiatus of this length is very unusual by this bands standards. The longer this goes on, the more I'm actually beginning to accept that we may have heard the last of this band.

I really, really liked Dark Days/Light Years but, yeah, I hope it's not their last album.

If anything they were so prolific that they began to be taken for granted by critics and their probably their audience, so a hiatus is not a bad idea, for whatever reason

I don't mind DD/LY as their swan song. HV would have been an awful way to go out (weirdly, not least because of the awful cover art, but also because as good as it is it seemed like a retread somehow, while DD/LY brought the fun back a bit and added new kraut elements to their sound). I'd be overjoyed to hear of a new album, but I'd be OK if they called it quits, too; they had a wonderfully productive, long run. Bless them.

Was humming this very song this morning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFfAzjDEY4c

Dark Days/Light Years would be a very good last album. Not quite as good as SFA at their peak, but I like it a lot more than the two albums that precede it.

I love DD/LY, so I'm not too concerned about it being their last album. I don't think it will be their last, though. More than half the band is recording their own stuff out of the same studio, and Gruff has been preoccupied with releasing another film. I know that Gruff has emphasized the band aren't broken up and that a tenth album will come in due time.

I'm pretty much in agreement the solo/side stuff is nowhere near the same quality as SFA's releases, but it's still mostly nice enough and I believe I've listened to it all. Truthfully, I didn't enjoy Cian's new one as much as his first.

http://www.amazon.com/American-Interior-Rhys-Gruff-ebook/dp/B00GED8DUG

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Xa%2Bg6xRQL.jpg

Book, album, film project. Probably set SFA back a couple years. I hope it's more worthwhile than the last subpar Neon Neon release.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHdEnNcXC-w

Man, I really don't like any of this year's SFA-related releases. Just had to dump Neon Neon and The Earth from iTunes...and I paid for both. Can't imagine listening to either one again. I'm reluctant to do the same to Cian's latest, but I don't rate that one too highly either. I don't know if I've gotten sick of SFA or if these side/solo projects just aren't very good. I definitely don't listen to SFA as much as I used to...

Cian Ciaran selling his vinyl collection: https://twitter.com/cianciaran/status/415455146533867520

Of library music/sounds, that is.