A guest series by The Robster
#8: Hermann ♥’s Pauline (1997, Creation Records, CRE252)
I’ve mentioned before that, the only thing you should expect about the Super Furry Animals is the unexpected. So when the first track from the band’s second album was unveiled in May 1997, it’s perhaps little surprise that we got a strange, psychedelic odyssey about Albert Einstein’s parents!
mp3: Hermann ♥’s Pauline [single version]
According to Wikipedia: “The song was inspired by the pitstops that the band would take at motorway service stations whilst out on tour, where Gruff Rhys would peruse through bitesized biographies about famous people.” It’s really not a track you’d earmark as a single. Indeed, when the album ‘Radiator’ was released three months later, it was clear there were numerous tracks that might have been better suited as the first single. But then, perhaps that wouldn’t have been a very super furry thing to do.
Nevertheless, it has become a real fan favourite. Maybe, in part, because the band didn’t play it live for many years due to it being too difficult to do so, so when they eventually did figure it out for the live setting, it would have been a big surprise to the fans.
I think it probably has the most entertainingly odd opening verse of any Top 40 hit ever:
Hermann loves Pauline, and Pauline loves Hermann
They made love and gave birth to a little German
They called him MC2 because he looked like no other
An asthma sufferer like Ernesto Guevara
The single version shortens the electronic sounds at the very beginning and end of the song; other than that, it’s identical to the album version. The wonderful sleeve, designed by Pete Fowler, marked the beginning of a collaboration between the band and artist that would last another dozen years. Hermann ♥’s Pauline charted at #26 in the UK in its first week before subsequently falling away. It was released in the regular three formats. The 7” and cassette featured this rowdy little upstart as its b-side:
mp3: Calimero
The CD had another Welsh language track, but this one had an altogether different feel.
mp3: Trôns Mr Urdd
My Welsh is very poor, and Google translate doesn’t really shed much light on things. But, from what I can make out (and I may well have got this entirely wrong) – the first of these tracks bemoans the cynicism and lack of respect for others in modern society, ending with the English phrase “I feel so sad…”. The latter song may or may not have something to do with cross-dressing. Please feel free to correct me. Unless I’m so embarrassingly wrong, in which case it might be kinder to leave me in ignorance…
Bonus track this week – well if there was a demo for Hermann… it has not been issued, so instead here’s an early version of another track that would grace the second LP. The Placid Casual was track 2 on ‘Radiator’, but its demo recorded the previous year in 1996 sounded rather different to the finished article.
mp3: The Placid Casual [demo]
In 1998, the band established Placid Casual Recordings, a label they could release any solo or side project material on. I’ve no idea if the label was named after this song, but it’s unlikely to have been the other way round.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
Kinda sounds like a Sell Out-era Who track, in a super furry way. Nice one, Robster.
Top stuff Robster, a good single. Catching up with last week’s post too-and you’re right, I’ve never posted that song- not sure why either as its a banger.