SUPER FURRY ANIMALS

Meh.

Headlining Green Man on the Saturday night

http://www.greenman.net/line-up/2015/

I'm going to really try to go to that. I'm excited that they're playing something in August. It gives me hope they're planning on staying together for a while. We'll see if they make it out of the summer. Zefur Wolves are also playing. I hear Gulp might as well. It'll be a great weekend.

I found a Zefur Wolves LP review: http://www.apessimistisneverdisappointed.com/2015/03/cian-ciarans-back-with-zefur-wolves-my.html

Sounds pretty good.

There's a Zefur Wolves track here. Not feeling it, although there are a few nice moments. http://www.gigslutz.co.uk/exclusive-zefur-wolves-premier-new-track-wake-gigslutz/

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/super-furry-animals-gruff-rhys-the-journey-through-a-distorted-vision-of-reality-10125805.html

turrican's earlier thoughts were a good read on the state of the band. when consider dark days/light years' songwriting and recording process took place during the hey venus! sessions, it's easy to see the band might've been running out of steam quite some time ago. i suppose gruff might've been deflecting since the concert reunion had not been announced yet, but i'm not so sure that the tour is anything more than a quick cash grab. they all seem pretty serious about their individual careers. if a tenth sfa album were to be as bad as the new blur album's sounding like it might be, then i guess it's for the best..

on another note, i listened to hey venus! last night and enjoyed it a lot more than I did when it came out. sounded pretty nice on good headphones, too.

when considering*

There's a fairly decent new interview in the NME. It's got a bit of positive information, such as the band's plans to release another b-sides compilation as well as floating the idea of reissuing more albums with Kliph Scurlock's help. The band still seems hesitant to comment on a new album, although I get the feeling they're open to the idea. They just haven't had enough time together to come up with ideas and recreate the environment they like to have when they record an LP.

Cian says they want their shows this year to be extremely loud and bass-heavy. They also mention songs like "Arnofio/Glo in the Dark," "Mountain People" and "Citizen's Band" being on the short list of songs to add to their setlist. All in all, it sounds like a promising direction for a band that seemed finished.

I don't see the point in reissuing the albums again, but a new B-sides compilation seems like a good idea.

I'm still hoping they plan to reissue all their albums on vinyl.

http://i.imgur.com/Dq5hiAU.png

I'm still hoping they plan to reissue all their albums on vinyl.

― Kitchen Person, Thursday, April 16, 2015 2:59 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm guessing those who don't want the value of their existing vinyl to go down would think otherwise!

I'm sure they wouldn't but it would make me happier than getting a new album. I started looking for their stuff on vinyl a couple of years ago. Had to stop in the end as it got depressing seeing copies of Radiator go for £80 every single time.

Oh, there's also a "behind the scenes" documentary about the summer tour on S4C on the 24th:

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife-news/sneak-peek-super-furry-animals-9052717

The SFA tour marks 20 years since they signed with the iconic indie record label Creation Records, a move which led to the band’s international success.

With some rare archive footage and classic Furry performances, the documentary will celebrate the extraordinary story of the group that has had more than twenty top 40 hits and a string of highly acclaimed, top 10 albums.

The documentary includes interviews, archive pictures, home-movie footage from the band’s personal collections and live performances from Glastonbury Festival, Top of the Pops and Later with Jools Holland.

Y'know, a lot of this stuff (reissues, a short tour, B-sides compilation) could easily be construed as being a mopping up exercise rather than any kind of continuation or new beginning.

You're totally right, and if that's the case, I think it's great fan service and pretty kind of them to at least wrap things up. I'm hopeful they'll record another album, but clearly their hesitation to do even that doesn't bode too well for things ever being like they were.

Then again, 4/5ths of the band could probably use easy money. Maybe it's just kind of Gruff.

they probably don't want to announce their intention to record an album yet to create anticipation and probably as the time to actually start work on it is many months away

This Zefur Wolves track is really rad. It's a shame it's not even two minutes long. Probably the grooviest, most SFA-sounding thing I've heard since DD/LY.

https://open.spotify.com/track/0fJpmhnswgTACvqqUOy8mg

Not sure what I'd like to see on another b-side compilation. The songs that make Out Spaced special for me are the psychedelic, stoned-out Welsh songs. "Pam V", "Dim Bendith," "Focus Pocus/Debiel" "Arnofio/Glo in the Dark" and "blerwytirhwng?" are some of my all-time favorite SFA songs. I wish they'd been able to further explore that territory.

You're totally right, and if that's the case, I think it's great fan service and pretty kind of them to at least wrap things up. I'm hopeful they'll record another album, but clearly their hesitation to do even that doesn't bode too well for things ever being like they were.

― afriendlypioneer, Thursday, April 16, 2015 11:04 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah. I mean, even if they do eventually get around to making their 10th album, I definitely think it's fair to say that the days of SFA putting out a record every couple of years are long gone now. If they choose to record new material, I suspect it'll be on a "whenever we feel like it" basis, and if they don't choose to record new material, then I suppose they can get away with getting the most out of the wealth of stuff they've already put out and stuff that's apparently in the vaults.

Not sure what I'd like to see on another b-side compilation. The songs that make Out Spaced special for me are the psychedelic, stoned-out Welsh songs. "Pam V", "Dim Bendith," "Focus Pocus/Debiel" "Arnofio/Glo in the Dark" and "blerwytirhwng?" are some of my all-time favorite SFA songs. I wish they'd been able to further explore that territory.

― afriendlypioneer, Thursday, April 16, 2015 11:40 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm interested to see what their choices would be for a second B-sides compilation, too. They might do the opposite of Out Spaced and put the more shorter/poppier B-sides on there. Although, it's also possible they could go the "completist" route.

They just added a gig. Less than two weeks from now, at the Gloucester Guildhall. It looks tiny.

http://www.gigsandtours.com/tour/super-furry-animals

The SFA documentary is on at 9:30 on Friday. They're also showing the SFA Classical Album documentary afterwards. I'd completely forgotten about that one. From what I remember, many of the songs they were working on ended up on DD/LY or Gruff's Hotel Shampoo.

Can someone please "tape" this for the benefit of those of us who aren't in the UK?

S4C! That took some searching for on the TiVo !

Hopefully there'll be English subtitles for non-Welsh speakers.

There is, apparently

https://instagram.com/p/1wbYS8y9o1/

That got me excited for some reason, but then I realized Daf has his own band and is also a pretty prolific session drummer. I still somehow hope it means they're secretly laying it down in the studio.

Only an hour to go. Hope there's some interesting stuff in there.

On 856 is the S4C AD channel, i.e. With audio descriptions.

So was the documentary any good, then? Ended up not watching it.

I couldn't get English subtitles, so I turned it off after a few minutes. It's completely narrated in Welsh.

It's here now, with subtitles: http://www.s4c.cymru/clic/c_level2.shtml?programme_id=527263044

I'll be watching soon.

I'm American, so I used a program called iPlayer Automator and downloaded the file directly from the BBC website. It showed up in iTunes with subtitles and English captions. I didn't have to set up a proxy or VPN to get it.

So, IMHO, it was really well done and I loved seeing some of the early footage i'd never seen before as well as some rare cancert footage. I could've watched a couple more hours of footage, but I really have no complaints.

Just watched the documentary and thought that, on the whole, it was very good and far more preferable (to me) than the book that came out recently. Plenty of early footage that I hadn't seen before. Some of the Rings Around The World/Phantom Power era stuff clearly came from the American Sasquatch documentary, but even then there were a couple of things in there that was new to me. I don't recall seeing the scene where they throw the TV out of the hotel window on American Sasquatch, for example. There must be more footage that didn't make the cut for American Sasquatch, surely. I did wish they'd spent as much time on the post-Phantom Power years as they had with the first six albums - the part where Gruff is playing the solo in the studio to 'Into The Night' I don't recall seeing before, which suggests to me there's more footage of the Hey Venus! sessions out there - but I guess if they'd went into further detail the documentary would have ended up at least an extra hour longer. The Dark Days/Light Years period just seemed skimmed over, and nothing on Das Koolies or the aborted "classical" project?

During the part where they mentioned they were in rehearsals for the tour, I noticed 'Patience' written on one of the lists. Wonder if they're thinking about playing it? Would be an odd choice!

I did see the doc, great to see the fa coffi pawb stuff, actually that was 'just' early SFA in style..

Wasn't the following show the 'aborted classical project', or something else? Not watched it yet..

Yeah, the following show was a documentary on the aborted "classical" project, but that was put together/first originally shown years ago. Just seems a bit bizarre to me that they didn't even mention it (or Das Koolies) in the new doc. Thinking about it, 2006 was probably one of the busiest years for the band, individually and collectively: Omni was released, Candylion was recorded, Neon Neon formed/work started on Stainless Style, The Peth had formed and were working on material, the aborted "classical" project was started that year, Super Furry Animals played various shows throughout the year, and work may have even begun on Hey Venus!. There's a scene in the documentary for the aborted "classical" project where they're in a studio, and on the wall is a list of songs that made it onto Dark Days/Light Years, even. So much stuff... doesn't surprise me that they ended up slowing down!

Actually, this NME news item (dated December 6th 2006) mentions that the band are at the mixing stage for (what was eventually titled) Hey Venus! so yeah, they'd pretty much started and almost finished Hey Venus! that year too. I don't know if this refers to the first mix (by Newfeld) which was mostly scrapped, or the second mix (by Chris Shaw) which was put out as the released version.

I actually find myself wanting to check out the pre-SFA bands after watching the doc. I've heard almost everything by Ffa Coffi Pawb, but have not listened to U Thant or managed to track down the WWZZ release. U Thant sounded all right based on the small amount of footage.

Ric mentions that Cian and Bunf toured France together with a guitar and some sequencers. I'd love to hear what that sounded like. I know this stuff must exist in some form. There really should be a wealth of unreleased material out there. I didn't realize they didn't use Newstead's mix. I'm not a big fan of the production on that album. It sounds kind of flat to me. I recall hearing that "baby ate my eightball" was originally quite heavy.

Like I said above, it seems like they didn't really have any new ideas after 2007 since DD/LY was mostly made up of songs that had already been floating around. I know that's not usual--for a band to carry a song or idea for a while before they record it. I wonder if they left anything off DD/LY.

That's not unusual, rather.

I'm excited to see how the shows go. They were a pretty inconsistent live act and Gruff's solo show has become extremely good in recent years. There's a setlist near the end of the documentary that didn't seem wildly different from the setlist they'd used in their last years together. I hope they end up taking some risks.

There's camcorder footage on Youtube of U Thant on a European tour in 1991. I don't think Bunf was in the band at the time, so he's not on there. Guto is, though.

As I understand it, they recorded Hey Venus! with Dave Newfeld and he also did mixes of all the tracks on the album, but for some reason or other the band chose not to use his original mixes and instead opted to get Chris Shaw (who worked on Guerrilla, Rings Around The World and Dark Days/Light Years) to mix the tracks instead. Only one Dave Newfeld mix made it to the album, which was 'Suckers!', the rest are Chris Shaw mixes of Dave Newfeld recordings. The intro to 'Crazy Naked Girls' on Dark Days/Light Years was actually recorded during the Hey Venus! sessions.

There's a bit of footage of Bunf in old bands on YouTube.

Anyway, on to some more rumor mill type stuff:

http://bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05sdh9s

Lauren welcomes Wales' finest hirsute beings Super Furry Animals in session. After an impressive nine album span, SFA leader Gruff Rhys decided to go it alone, it seems he had many projects in his head to unleash on the world. Not least bringing the story of the Welsh explorer John Evans to light in last year's American Interior multimedia outpouring. But luckily for us, the SFAs are back with brand new material and a live session. Hold on to your hats, this could get strange.

Do you think they're just mistaken on the last part?

Yes. Although stranger things have happened.

They're on stage in about 15 minutes in Gloucester. Can't wait to see what they play!

A kind fellow by the name ianjwills on Twitter promises to live Tweet the set.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDrePStWgAAbBQp.jpg:large

Jesus christ, that picture!

The set looks pretty great right now. They're wearing suits that recall their Love Kraft outfits. They even have a horn section tonight.

Setlist looks pretty predictable to me, bar 'Y Gwyneb Iau' which hasn't been aired live often.

Ooh, and 'Pan Ddaw'r Wawr', which hasn't been played live since the Mwng tour. Makes sense that they're playing a lot of Mwng, though.

They're now playing "Arnofio/Glo in the Dark"! One of my all-time favorites.