A guest series by The Robster
#3: Hometown Unicorn (1996, Creation Records, CRE222)
Just a few months after signing a deal with one of the most feted independent record labels in the UK, Super Furry Animals put out their first new music of the partnership.
mp3: Hometown Unicorn
A curious choice as the first single from the forthcoming debut album. It’s not as energetic as some of their previous efforts, but certainly boasts that lovely woozy psychedelic feel we’d all adore from them over the next decade-plus. Plus, of course, the subject matter was typically odd, being about a French teenager called Franck Fontaine who went missing, but subsequently turned up a week later claiming to have been abducted by aliens.
Its chorus is undeniably catchy, another SFA trait, and it was voted Single Of The Week by NME. Released on 26th February 1996, it became the band’s first Top 50 hit, reaching the somewhat mountainous number 47. It came out on three formats. The 7” and dreaded cassette format featured this b-side:
mp3: Don’t Be A Fool, Billy
This is a delight, and certainly one of the band’s strongest early b-sides. It really shows another super furry strength – the vocal harmonies. They’d make good use of these over the years, and I think this is the first example of them coming to the fore.
The CD contained a third track.
mp3: Lazy Life (Of No Fixed Identity)
The subtitle of this one might sound familiar. That’s because, if you cast your mind back, in part one of the series I featured the first recording the band ever laid down, from 1993 when they were still fronted by Rhys Ifans. It was called Of No Fixed Identity. To my knowledge, Lazy Life is an entirely different song with no link to it’s nearly-namesake. And to be fair, listening to them both, if there was any similarity between them, you’d be hard-pressed to find it. Lazy Life is an altogether faster and more energetic kettle of fish. An OK song, but not one I’d put on a b-sides highlights playlist.
This week’s bonus track is another track from the demos the band made the previous year in preparation for the recording of their first album.
mp3: Hometown Unicorn [demo]
While they were moving forward, the band would look back for their next single. It would, however, provide their Top 40 breakthrough.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
I love the compressed/fuzzed out guitar sound.