According to the lyric in the lead song lifted from today’s featured EP, the three things in the title of this post are the answers to the question ‘What Is The Meaning Of Life?’
mp3 : Super Furry Animals – Smokin’
Ice Hockey Hair EP contains four songs which Super Furry Animals felt didn’t fit in with the material they were recording for the album Radiator, their first Top 10 album released in 1997. The title track has an unusual back story in that it was commissioned by Channel 4 for a programme about sloth as part of a series on the seven deadly sins. The programme in question was presented by Howard Marks who had, of course, been namechecked previously by the band.
Wiki reveals that the band nipped inyo a small community recording studio in Cardiff, decided to loop a sample of a Black Uhuru track “I Love King Selassie”, playing along and writing Smokin’ completely spontaneously.
mp3 : Black Uhuru – I Love King Selassie
As for the other three tracks, Ice Hockey Hair is a 7 minute epic in which the band throw the kitchen sink, production wise and give a taster of much of what was to come in the next album, Guerilla, one which didn’t quite do so well as Radiator. Ice Hockey Hair seems to be a Swedish description of a very bad hairstyle akin to a mullet.
mp3 : Super Furry Animals – Ice Hockey Hair
The CD is completed by a short, less than two minutes long, remix of the lead song and a low-key instrumental track named after a guitar effects pedal:-
mp3 : Super Furry Animals – Mu-Tron
mp3 : Super Furry Animals – Let’s Quit Smoking
This climbed all the way to #12 in the UK singles chart and Smokin’ was given the #2 position in the NME best singles of 1998….beaten by the rather fabulous Intergalactic by The Beastie Boys.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
I dip in and out of Super Furry Animals (bar a few singles, I’m not much of a fan of the later stuff) but Ice Hockey Hair and Smokin’ are absolute corkers!