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

A guest series by The Robster

#11: Demons (1997, Creation Records, CRE283)

1997 had been an astonishing year for Super Furry Animals. They really were critics’ darlings, featuring in so many of those best of the year type lists all the magazines did (and still do…). ‘Radiator’ had been a major success in critical terms, and it seemed SFA were in the Premier League of Creation’s artist roster, which let’s not forget also included Oasis, Primal Scream and Teenage Fanclub.

To round the year off, a fourth and final single was released from the album, and it was what I would still argue is one of the band’s top 10 songs of their entire career.

mp3: Demons [edit]

It’s a song I took to the moment I first heard it on ‘Radiator’, and it seems I wasn’t the only one. Various reviewers described it as “spine-tingling”, “monumental”, “fantastically absurd” and so on. It’s the one song you would have thought would have huge crossover appeal, yet it was another let-down chart-wise. It entered the chart on 30th November 1997 at its number 27 peak – the same as its immediate predecessor. Lyrically, like most of the band’s output to date, it contained some gems – “By the year four million/Our skins will be vermillion” being my fave.

All formats of the single contained the album version of the song, but to keep things fresh, I’ve posted a slightly shorter edit. Not sure where it comes from – I can’t find any record of one being issued, even as a promo – but as I have it, you can have it too.

The b-side of the 7” and cassette was this rabble-rouser:

mp3: Hit And Run

Another decent track, a kind of glam-rock stomper that teases its sing-a-long qualities through a barrage of guitars. It was demoed for the album, and to be fair, it wouldn’t have sounded out of place among some of the record’s rowdier numbers.

The 12” and CD added a third track:

mp3: Carry The Can

The weakest of the three tracks in my opinion, but perfectly listenable.

This week’s bonus? Well there was a glut of stuff dating from the ‘Radiator’ era I could have posted here, including some more of the demos, or something very electronic that sneaked out practically unnoticed, that hinted at another project some members of the band had been working on, and would continue to work on, but which wouldn’t surface for 25 years or so! To be fair though, not an awful lot of it excited me enough to share it, so in the end I plumped for this interesting remix of another ‘Radiator’ track.

mp3: Download [Llwybr Llaethog remix]

Llwybr Llaethog were/are an experimental Welsh outfit you would have only heard on John Peel back in the day (ask Dirk – I think he’s familiar with them). They don’t destroy the song, but rather lend their weird electronic slant to it, with some nice samples to boot.

Demons was to be the last time as many as four singles were released from a Super Furry Animals album. Over the years, the song has lost none of its impact. In fact, it has been one of the band’s most covered. Sixties icon Manfred Mann even made it his own when he mashed it up with Prefab Sprout’s Dragons for his 2004 solo album, erm, ’2006’. It’s…. interesting, especially when the German rapper enters the mix… It’s so completely bonkers, in fact, I’m certain the SFA boys would have approved wholeheartedly!

Next week, a bumper package of stuff covering another between-album phase…

The Robster