Super Furry Animals - Dark Days / Light Years [Album]

Jonny Abrams

March 26, 2009, 05:06 PM

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It can’t be a coincidence that, just as Super Furry Animals have a new album out, the sun starts shining again. Perhaps it’s Mother Nature flashing her approval. Or maybe even God his/her self, for it is he/her who said (famously) “let there be light”, thus sparking a series of events culminating in the creation of this most under appreciated of bands.

This, their ninth effort, continues their run of consecutive brilliant albums which dates back to…well, their first one! Since their 1996 debut Fuzzy Logic, the Furries’ sound has evolved into a technicolour brand of futuristic pop which, in terms of both ambition and warmth, ranks alongside The Beatles. That they continue to be overshadowed commercially by trendy drivel such as Razorlight and The Wombats is a crying shame. Not for the band, who have never appeared to court stardom – but for the purity of the waters of musical influence, in which Razorlight are tantamount to toxic waste. (Look out for the three-eyed fish.)

Following on from the chunky acid sunshine of the pallet-cleansing Hey Venus!, the Furries revert to mining their vast reserves of eccentricities. Dark Days/Light Years is their noisiest work since 1999 masterpiece Guerrilla, coming across like the lighter-hearted cousin of Primal Scream’s Xtrmntr. The roots of each track seem to be grooves that emerged from jam sessions, rather than the usual song craft. The result is their first album that could genuinely be described as ‘sexy’ – but not in a moronic, Lady Ga Ga kind of way.

Opening gambit Crazy Naked Girls flirts with Andre 3000 space-funk, before bubbling over with fuzzy wah-wah guitars and a terrific titular wail courtesy of lead guitarist Huw Bunford. As departures go, it’s as glorious as Johnny Borrell getting fired into the sun. Next up, we have Mt, starring techno-wizard-cum-doo-wop-crooner Cian Ciaran singing about a “big fucking mountain” over what sounds like Spirit In The Sky tripping balls on Treasure Island. Oh yes.

Main man Gruff Rhys – who in a more enlightened society would have statues built in his honour – doesn’t take centre stage until third track Moped Eyes. And it’s show-stealing stuff, softly-intoned and sexy (there’s that word again) vocals on the verse leading into a chorus blessed with harmonies so summery and otherworldly that you’ll have to borrow a Martian’s sunglasses to protect your eyes. It’s pop, but not as we know it.

The sunshine pours over into next track Inaugural Trams, which is undoubtedly the best song celebrating the progress of transport links in a German town ever written. Franz Ferdinand’s Nick McCarthy chips in with a highly pleasing German rap, while Rhys somehow manages to make a singalong out of lines like “we have reduced emissions by 75 per cent”. Then we are treated to the screaming, rumbling Inconvenience before the album finds a refreshing shady spot with Cardiff in the Sun. Just as with Guerrilla centrepiece Some Things Come From Nothing, Cardiff in the Sun provides a welcome break from the chaos which surrounds it, settling on a blissful groove before massaging the soul with yet more fantastic harmonies.

Next up is the stupendously-titled The Very Best of Neil Diamond, in which middle-Eastern sounds colour a tale of music seeping out from under the rubble of a bombed house. Never has such a daftly-named song felt so poignant. Well, since Ice Hockey Hair, anyway. Helium Hearts sporadically threatens to break out into Lovely Day by Bill Withers, which of course is a good thing. File alongside Juxtaposed With U in terms of its delicious updating of classic 1970s soul.

Bunford returns to lead duty on White Socks/Flip Flops, whose chorus stomps all over the verses with big, psychedelic boots, before the faintly Ffa Coffi Pawb-sounding Where Do You Wanna Go? sportingly shares its backing track with Lliwiau Llachar. Good vibes well and truly stirred, the album finishes surprisingly subtly with the driving Pric, which itself finishes with four minutes of gently melting away synth bubbles. It’s a strange end to a strange album but, like with any Furries album, it will surely make sense after another five listens or so.

It’s easy to go overboard when praising this band, but it’s entirely appropriate. Blind loyalty shouldn’t enter into following a pop band – as opposed to, say, following a football team. That Super Furry Animals continue to inspire devotion and adulation is testament to the fact that, even after all this time, they are still really, really good.

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