SUPER FURRY SUNDAYS (aka The Singular Adventures of Super Furry Animals)

A guest series by The Robster

#10: Play It Cool (1997, Creation Records, CRE275)

‘Radiator’, the second Super Furry Animals album, was set free in August 1997 and was festooned with great acclaim across the board. At this stage, the band could do no wrong in the eyes of fans and critics alike. Just four weeks after the album’s release, a third single was released. Play It Cool was one of the album’s highlights, but for the single, a slightly different (remixed?) version was offered up.

mp3: Play It Cool [single version]

There’s little to choose between the two versions. The most obvious difference is the intro, and the album version sounds a little more ‘bassy’, but other than that, they’re pretty similar. Not that it mattered – Play It Cool was a highlight on an album of many highlights, and it demonstrated once more how the band could produce something so original yet so completely melodic and accessible. The lyric “she’s raising money for the sex appeal” is another stroke of Gruff Rhys’ genius, in my opinion.

Play It Cool entered the UK charts on the first Sunday of October 1997 at number 27, which disappointingly is as high as it got. But chart positions have rarely been an indication of quality, right? It was released on the usual formats. The cassette and limited 7” included this on its flip:

mp3: Pass The Time

It’s a track I like, but it clearly wasn’t right for the album. That said, it would probably have been deemed good enough for release as an a-side by numerous Britpop bands of the era who were far lesser in quality than SFA, but more commercially successful.

The real gem lay in wait on the 12” and CD, a track I think starts off sounding like Shangri-La by the Kinks. It’s one of the band’s quietest, most tender songs. Don’t worry about it only coming out of the right channel to begin with, it’s meant to be that way…

mp3: Cryndod Yn Dy Lais (trans: Tremor In Your Voice)

This week’s bonus track is the demo version of the title track, recorded more than a year before. While the basic structure of the song is intact, it was clearly unfinished at this stage – there’s only one verse which is repeated, it’s slower and quite raw-sounding.

mp3: Play It Cool [demo]

The ‘Radiator’ campaign wasn’t over yet though…

 

The Robster