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

A guest series by The Robster

#22: Slow Life EP (2004, Placid Casual, BBN045CD2)

At a couple of points throughout this series, I’ve mentioned how some records and periods of Super Furry Animals’ career are considered by some people to be their absolute peak. The Ice Hockey Hair EP is one, the ‘Rings Around The World’ album is another. For some fans, though, it’s Slow Life. In fairness, it really does stand up as one of the finest moments of their existence, so it’s hard to argue against it.

MP3: Slow Life

The closing track on ‘Phantom Power’ is like nothing the band had done before, yet weirdly, it’s also the quintessential Super Furry Animals track. It brings together all the constituent parts of what made them great into one, single, seven-minute epic. I’m going to lift some bits from the song’s Wikipedia entry as it explains everything more than well enough:

Slow Life was written in two stages. According to bassist Guto Pryce the “electronic part” was composed by keyboard player Cian Ciaran “quite a few years” before its eventual release. The band had tried to fit this early, purely electronic version on previous albums but had “never got ’round to it”. By the time the group came to record ‘Phantom Power’ they were anxious to release the song, however Cian was reluctant to leave it in its original form and encouraged the rest of the band to jam over his original track. According to Gruff Rhys the instrumentation was recorded “pretty much live” after which lyrics were written and the band’s 10-minute jam session was “chopped up and made into a composed song” with the electronic section intact. Strings were later added by Sean O’Hagan.

Some promotional copies of ‘Phantom Power’ featured Slow Life as the first track, although it eventually appeared as the last track on the officially released version of the album. Gruff has stated that the song had to go at either the beginning or the end of the record as it is the “most sonically impressive” track on the album. He has described his lyrics as “regurgitating what we hear on the news, recycled, vomiting them all back”.

For me, that insight into the song’s formation makes it particularly great. Just a live, 10-minute jam over an electronic backing and voila! Those strings do finish things off wonderfully, mind. Slow Life really was – and still is – one of the best tracks of the century. And you can quote me on that.

It was the third and final single from ‘Phantom Power’, but its release, in April 2004, was far from conventional. It, along with its two b-sides, was initially available digitally only from the website of Placid Casual, the band’s own independent record label, which suggests that Epic may have been reluctant to release it themselves, possibly due to its length. They did, however, put out a single-sided 12” promo. It then featured as a CD single in the special limited edition of the ‘Phantom Phorce’ remix album in its own slipcase sleeve (as shown above). Needless to say, it didn’t chart due to the nature of its release.

The b-sides? Well, the ‘Phantom Power’ era is a bit of an odd one because up to this point, the vast majority of b-sides on Super Furry Animals singles were largely excellent, with some real lost gems to be found amongst them. I never found this for any of the ‘Phantom Power’ singles though, and these don’t really improve things that much.

MP3: Motherfokker
MP3: Lost Control

The former features Newport’s finest Goldie Lookin’ Chain larking around, pretending to be aliens. It was panned by reviewers, but to be fair I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as it’s made out to be. The London-based press were no doubt just exercising their well-versed snobbery, mainly because they just didn’t get it. Motherfokker may not make a Top 10 SFA b-sides compilation, but it’s better than 95% of anything in the charts in April 2004. Plus, Graham The Bear of GLC is a mate of mine, and he’s a bloody good bloke (he also runs a record shop in Monmouth, should you ever be passing through…) As for Lost Control, well it’s basically an instrumental remix of the album track Out Of Control.

Yer bonus tracks for this week – well my complete inability to make tough decisions means I failed to come up with just two tracks for you – so you’re getting twice that many! There was no demo made for Slow Life, but I’ve pulled together some things from various sources, some of which have not been commercially released. So here’s a CD2 of the Slow Life EP.

MP3: Slow Life [radio edit]
MP3: Slow Life [Bench remix]
MP3: Slow Life [rough mix]
MP3: Motherfokker [street edit]

As an added bonus, here’s some links to my aforementioned mate Graham The Bear talking about the Super Furry Animals and their legacy. Part three contains a little tale about when his side project supported the Furries in London, involving Slow Life, 50 Cent’s microphone and a very rude phrase. Don’t go playing this in front of your boss, young children or Daily Mail readers…

This is typical of the sort of conversations I have with Graham whenever I see him. It’s why I like the guy! (In another video on the same YouTube channel, he also talks about drinking with the Manics in a Newport pub while still underage, if you’re interested in that sort of thing…)

The Robster