Category: Super Furry Animals

A guest series by The Robster

#30: Bing Bong (2016, Strangetown Records, STR030)

Back in November 2003, the Wales national football team stood at the precipice of history. After 45 years, they were just a single game away from qualifying for their first major tournament in 45 years – Euro 2004. It had been an odd campaign, during which they won their first four matches – including a massive shock win against Italy – before drawing one and losing three of their next four. It meant they finished second in their group and headed for a two legged play-off against Russia.

There was excitement in the nation, none more so than in the Super Furry Animals camp, containing five footie fans who, in the video for Play It Cool some years earlier, had played for Wales and beaten the mighty Brazil. Kind of. In preparation for what would surely be a glorious win against the Russians, they wrote a song that they planned to record and release in line with Euro 2004 in Portugal, supporting the Welsh team.

The first leg of the play-off finished 0-0, slightly disappointing, but it meant it was all or nothing for both teams in the second game. Sadly, a single goal sank the brave Welshmen that night. A qualification that started so well ended, as we all knew in our heart of hearts it would, in failure. That was the story of Welsh football. And the song written by our heroes lay buried among giant inflatable bears, various stage props, dreams and paraphernalia in the Furries archive for the best part 12 years.

Fast-forward to 2015, and after nearly six decades of failure, and against all the odds, a new breed of players finally took Wales to a major football tournament. As if by coincidence, or fate, or a bit of both, this also coincided with the Super Furry Animals’ 20th Anniversary tour. As a recording outfit, the band had been dormant for half a dozen years, but they saw a golden opportunity to soundtrack this unlikely success story, with what they described as “the lunar howl of their lost opus”. So after its prolonged hibernation, Bing Bong was resurrected, recorded, and released in the summer of 2016 as a prelude to that year’s European Championships.

mp3: Bing Bong

“Into the studio we went, with wagging tails to record what is a rite of passage to many a band: the football cup song,” the band explained. “See also fine examples by New Order for England in 1990 and Primal Scream for Scotland in 1996.

Bing Bong isn’t a song of victory, nor of defeat, but a beacon of faith to return to when your best centre forward gets sent off, or it rains at your festival.” According to Gruff: “Bing bong is a Welsh folk idiom that we have appropriated, but its pronunciation has been partly inspired by the sonic motif of the talking robot, Twiki, in the sci-fi series Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century.”

The story of Wales at Euro 2016 is well documented. Experiencing the sheer joy and excitement of a nation who until then had almost forgot there was a sport involving a round ball, was exhilarating. What has been largely forgotten is that their best ever band delivered one final tune in celebration before parting ways. Kind of.

They called it ‘cosmic disco’, which I suppose it is. The lyrics were largely nonsensical, even when translated into English, and it really didn’t sound like the Super Furry Animals at all. In fact, it was more in keeping with what four fifths of them would emerge with a few years later under the moniker of Das Koolies. You won’t hear much in the way of guitars in it, it’s all shimmering, sparkly synths and otherworldly electronics. I don’t think it would have sounded like this had Wales beaten Russia and Bing Bong been recorded for Euro 2004 instead.

It would be the last new material Super Furry Animals would ever release. Well, at least as far as we know. We live in hope. It was also the first (and last) physical single they released in nine years. It was put out as a single-sided 12” on their own Strangetown Records label.

Promo CDs contained a much shorter radio edit, which may well do the job for some people:

mp3: Bing Bong [radio edit]

Some final live dates followed across North America before it ended. Super Furry Animals went into hibernation at the end of 2016 and have not been seen since. Well, kind of.

Your final bonus track is taken from the band’s performance at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, in July 2016.

mp3: Bing Bong [live]

And that, my friends, is it! Of course, the members of Super Furry Animals are all alive and well, and still making great music. Gruff released his 9th solo album this year, while the other four are out and about as Das Koolies, who also put out their second record in 2025. Guto’s other band Gulp also released their third album recently, and I’ve no doubt everyone else is doing all kinds of weird and wonderful musical things.

Oh, and for those pedants among you who are screaming right now: “Robster, you’ve forgotten about that obscure digital single Of No Fixed Identity the band released for charity in 2022!” Well, no, I haven’t. That track, you see, was unearthed from the Super Furry Archive and dated back to 1993 when Rhys Ifans and Dic Ben were still in the band, before Cian joined and before they had actually released any records. If you swing right the way back to part one of this series, I included it there because I reckon, despite when they released it, that’s where it belongs.

Thanks for riding with me on this Super Furry Journey. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself, hope you have too. Now, I need a nice long catnap. Night night…

The Robster

JC ADDS……..

I think I speak on behalf of all the TVV community when I say that this has been one of the most enjoyable, entertaining and informative series in all the time this blog has been on the go.  The Robster has a wonderful writing style, and his passion for all things SFA really shone through, while his idea to offer up so many extras in the shape of live recordings, different and unique mixes etc., really did make his contributions such essential reading these past 20 weeks.

I’ll of course say thank you (as I have done on a regular basis when his emails had arrived in the Inbox), but those two words on their own don’t quite seem enough.

A reminder of which beat combos and singers have now had their singles featured in depth over the years – Altered Images, Cinerama, The Clash, The Fall, Grinderman, James, The Jam, Luke Haines/The Auteurs, Marc Almond, Morrissey, New Order, Paul Haig, Pet Shop Boys, R.E.M, Simple Minds (the early years!), The Style Council, Super Furry Animals, The Undertones and The Wedding Present.  Everything can be found in the vaults via the index.

Next up is………well, you’ll just have to tune in next Sunday to find out.

A guest series by The Robster

#29: Mt. (2009, Rough Trade)

‘Dark Days/Light Years’ had a potential 5 or 6 singles on it, but in the end just the two were released, its second being one of the three songs on the album not written or sung by de facto band frontman Gruff Rhys.

mp3: Mt. [edit]

Despite the abbreviated title, it is pronounced in full – Mountain – and according to the band, it “concerns people turning molehills into extreme sport venues.” Written and sung by keyboard/electronics wiz Cian, the lyrics examine the topic of how some problems appear to be so huge, when in reality they can be solved easily, especially when we all support one another. This lyric sums it up, and there are plenty of lessons our leaders could learn from these lines alone, but never will:

Do we need more than diplomacy
To get us through tragedy?
One thing is for sure,
You can’t beat solidarity.

Ask the likes of Kneecap and Bob Vylan about that last line – that’s something they have been experiencing for a little while, much to our increasingly fascistic leaders’ disdain.

Enough politics! The single was a digital-only release and edited out the profanity, replacing the f-word with “scary”, though I’m not sure it gained much more radio airplay than the uncensored version would have. It’s a decent enough track, but I think it’s about a minute or so too long. A three-minute edit would have made it pretty much perfect.

I’ve assembled another live single for your bonus tracks this week. Two more ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ songs recorded live in New York City in 2009.

mp3: Mt. [live at the Highline Ballroom, NYC]
mp3: Crazy Naked Girls [live at the Highline Ballroom, NYC]

On the album, Mt. followed the wild opening track Crazy Naked Girls, co-sung by Gruff and Bunf. As one reviewer put it: “Crazy Naked Girls signals the band asserting its ambitious, messy, daft, generally inspired side – the side that some of us love the most, to be honest.” He’s not wrong. While it’s far from typical of the songs on the album, it certainly opens proceedings by putting a big, silly smile on the faces of the fans who had stuck with them from the start.

Both these live tracks are officially unreleased, and are my gift to you lot who have stuck with me throughout this series. Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and it seemed that Mt. might well have signalled the end of Super Furry Animals. It was the last track they would release until… well, until something of a sporting miracle occurred some years later…

 

The Robster

A guest series by The Robster

#28: Inaugural Trams (2009, Rough Trade)

In a parallel Super Furry universe, there is a utopian European town that has just opened a new public tram system. The authorities have dubbed it a day of celebration and a public holiday has been announced. Yes, of course, it’s an obvious subject for a song. Well, it is if you’re Super Furry Animals, anyway!

mp3: Inaugural Trams [edit]

The first track released from the band’s 9th studio album ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ is a blinder. There’s a real krautrock feel to it, supplemented by some spoken German from special guest Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand. His rap in the middle is, as far as I can make out, quite nonsensical, but that might just well fit the general SFA aesthetic. Let’s face it, there really haven’t been many songs written about trams, and certainly none with such a brilliantly unique chorus:

It’s a secular day and it will be even better tomorrow
It’s the first day of the integrated transport hub
Let us celebrate this monumental progress
We have reduced emissions by seventy-five per cent

The inspiration behind the song seemingly comes from an event involving one of Gruff Rhys’ family: “My great-grandmother was run over by a tram in the Mumbles*. But I’m still very much in favour of trams as a low-emission inner-city transport solution. The song is about commemorating the opening with a secular holiday. It’s a celebration of living with science rather than religion.”

Inaugural Trams was a sign that the new album was going to be a little more elaborate than its stripped-back predecessor. Also, in comparison to ‘Hey Venus!’ being the band’s shortest album, ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ is their longest, weighing in at a full hour. It showcased a real mixed bag of styles and was described by Gruff as having a “biblical sound”, with songs that couldn’t be played indoors!

“There are not a whole lot of chords in these songs; they’re not as song-based in the conventional song-writing way. They’ve been developed out of band jams, but it turned out sounding like songs pretty much anyway.” In fact, many of the songs on ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ had evolved from jams, riffs and grooves the band had been working on for a number of years. Some had originally been mooted for the previous album, but ended up being held over.

I think Inaugural Trams kind of sounds how Gruff described – there are only two chords, by-and-large, but it has a great melody and a compelling groove. There are a few songs on the album that follow this trend – the psychedelic odyssey Pric probably being my fave of the lot. That said, there’s a sequence of songs in the second half of the record that show the poppiest side of the band we’d ever heard before, which is ironic considering ‘Hey Venus!’ was a deliberate attempt to make a straight-up pop album. Helium Hearts in particular has “massive chart smash!” written all over it. Maybe if it had been performed by some teen heartthrob of the period, I’ve no doubt it would have fulfilled its potential. It wasn’t a single, but it’s the most obvious single the band ever wrote.

There were no physical formats of Inaugural Trams made available, but promo CDs featured two edits – a radio edit and an album edit, so-called because it is the album version, but it doesn’t crossfade into the next track. It’s also about 15 seconds shorter than the version that would appear on the 2016 compilation ‘Zoom! The Best Of Super Furry Animals’.

mp3: Inaugural Trams [album edit]

While there was no official tour to promote the album, they did still play some shows. So with there being a distinct lack of b-sides, I’m going to give you some live versions of ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ songs taken from a bootleg of the band playing in New York City in 2009.

mp3: Inaugural Trams [live at the Highline Ballroom, NYC]
mp3: The Very Best Of Neil Diamond [live at the Highline Ballroom, NYC]

If you cast your minds back a few weeks (to the Slow Life post, to be precise), you’ll remember I posted a few links to an interview with my friend Graham of Goldie Lookin Chain. In one of the clips, he spoke about his disbelief on learning that SFA had a new song called The Very Best Of Neil Diamond.

“I texted Cian and said ‘If you’ve written a song called The Very Best Of Neil Diamond…’ I think I offered to chop my bollocks off, but I changed it [to] ‘You owe me a pint’. Lucky old bollocks!” I mean, it’s an utterly brilliant song title that only a band like Super Furry Animals are worthy of, if you ask me. According to Gruff: “[It’s] about how you can’t choose the soundtrack to your life.”

Hmm, maybe not, but if a film was made about my life, I’d want Super Furry Animals to soundtrack much of it.

Next week, a single with something of a new voice…

* For those unfamiliar with this part of the world, Mumbles is a headland just to the southwest of Swansea. The most famous person from Mumbles is Catherine Zeta-Jones.

 

The Robster

A guest series by The Robster

#27: The Gift That Keeps Giving (2007, Rough Trade)

Merry Christmas! Well, at least that’s what Super Furry Animals were saying when they released their first seasonal single on 25th December 2007.

mp3: The Gift That Keeps Giving

It was deliberately conceived as a Christmas single as part of the band’s mission to make a pop album, ‘Hey Venus!’. The title is taken from a studio session in 2004. Accordfing to Gruff:

“Geoff Travis asked us for one of our pop records, so we thought a pop record should have a Christmas single. We’d been playing around with this phrase because we had a Scottish engineer who helped us make the 22-minute version of The Man Don’t Give A Fuck” and he always used to say ‘it’s the gift that keeps giving!’ He was just referring to the length of the song… but we found out it’s also a popular American shopping phrase.”

Thankfully, it’s not a typical Christmas song. It’s actually quite good! Soulful and laid-back, it was favourably compared to Burt Bacharach, and you can hear that I think, especially with that trumpet solo. The critics loved it too, but given the nature of the release – a free download, no physical formats, had already been out on the album for 5 months – it got nowhere near the hit parade, becoming the first SFA single not to chart at all.

Obviously, there were no b-sides either, so what gifts can I give you this week? Well, as usual, I’ve dug a couple things up you might be interested in. The first is a live version of The Gift That Keeps Giving recorded for the Bristol-based student radio station Hub Radio. Like last week’s live offering, it features just Gruff and Guto in stripped-back acoustic mode, but it’s an unreleased curio you might like.

mp3: The Gift That Keeps Giving [live Hub Session]

A couple weeks ago, I offered up a live version of Show Your Hand from the 2007 Glastonbury Festival, so let’s return to that show, seeing as it’s from the right time period. Here’s a wonderful version of Northern Lights, played in the style of a band I’m guessing the vast majority of visitors to this blog love dearly…

mp3: Northern Lights [live at Glastonbury]

And finally… while the UK and Europe had been enjoying ‘Hey Venus!’ since August, those poor souls across the Atlantic had to wait until January 2008 to hear it. To promote its impending release, a radio promo was issued, another track from the album, one of its loudest, rowdiest numbers.

mp3: Neo Consumer

Just three more weeks left….

 

The Robster

A guest series by The Robster

#26: Run-Away (2007, Rough Trade, RTRADS419)

According to Gruff Rhys,

“Run-Away came out of listening to Be My Baby too many times”.

That’s as good an intro as you need to this week’s single, for Run-Away is an unashamed homage to Phil Spector and his wall of sound. The second single from Super Furry Animals’ 8th album rates as one of their best. It’s a song that just speaks for itself when you hear it.

mp3: Run-Away

After a lot of experimentation and electronic noodlings on the previous two or three records, ‘Hey Venus’ saw the band strip everything back and make a record they could play live with little embellishment. Despite its simplicity, the band claims there is a narrative running through the songs, and that it is about a character called Venus and her journey from a small town to the big city. Run-Away comes right at the start of the story (it’s track 2 on the album but follows a very short intro called The Gateway Song). It opens with Gruff telling us “This song is based on a true story, which would be fine if it wasn’t autobiographical”, but as we all know by now, what constitutes a “true story” in Super Furryland is anyone’s guess. But why is Venus running away?

You found another love
Someone to wipe away your tears
I left it all behind of me
Never to turn and face my fears

This is followed by one of Gruff’s best couplets – and he was always pretty good at this:

We may have fought with teeth and nails
I still recall your banking details

If I was going to compile a SFA playlist for someone who had never heard them before, there’s no doubt Run-Away would feature pretty early. It showcases how, despite all the technical jiggery-pokery and psychedelic wig-outs they employed in a lot of their music, the band knew how to make pop music. Stripped back, they sounded as good as they ever were. There are some critics who don’t rate ‘Hey Venus!’ as highly as their other records, moaning how it doesn’t sound as adventurous or as sonically complex as anything else the band made. But it’s meant to be a pop record, and pop music isn’t meant to be complex. Run-Away is a perfect example of how simple great pop music can be. Spector would be proud.

Despite its brilliance though, Run-Away wouldn’t set the charts alight. In fact, despite reaching number 1 in the Indie charts, it only got to number 120 in the UK. It would be the last time they would have a single anywhere in the charts. It was also the last time for 9 years that physical formats of a SFA single would be commercially issued. Like its immediate predecessor, there were two formats – a 7” picture disc and a CD. Both contained this absolute gem of a b-side:

mp3: These Bones

More and more, the other members of the band were contributing songs to albums, and this is one were Gruff takes a step away from the microphone. I can’t say for sure, but I reckon it’s either Cian or Bunf taking over lead vocal duties here. It doesn’t matter who’s singing though, this is another straight-up pop song, inspired by two bands who had no doubt been massive influences on them right from the start – ELO and the Beach Boys. One of the band’s best b-sides in my opinion.

The third track on the CD single was very different to the others:

mp3: That’s What I’m Talking About

This is more of a “conventional” SFA song (if there is such a thing) and it’s obvious it would never have been in contention for inclusion on the album. I’m quite surprised they didn’t hold it over for their next record like some other songs written around the same time as those on ‘Hey Venus!’.

This week’s bonus track is an interesting live take on Run-Away, captured on long-running Irish TV show Other Voices. It’s just Gruff and Guto in a kitchen accompanied by acoustic guitars, a cheap keyboard and a glockenspiel. It lacks the Spector feel of the original, but the tune still shines through.

mp3: Run-Away [live on Other Voices]

Next week, we enjoy a Super Furry Christmas!

 

The Robster

A guest series by The Robster

#25: Show Your Hand (2007, Rough Trade, RTRADS402)

For the first time since their very first release way back in 1995, a whole calendar year passed without a single Super Furry Animals release. Their contract with Sony was up, and so the band found themselves signing a new deal with legendary indie label Rough Trade. It would have been easy to call it a day, or take an extended break and concentrate on other projects (Gruff released his debut solo album ‘Yr Atal Genhedlaeth’ a few months before the Furries ’ last album ‘Love Kraft’ in 2005). Instead, the band headed back into the studio to record new material.

The approach was different to previous records. It was during the tour to promote ‘Love Kraft’ that the band realised there was a “very different atmosphere” in their audiences when the new songs were played. ‘Love Kraft’ wasn’t exactly full of rockers, most of the songs were mid-tempo, strings-laden and rather chilled. The crowds weren’t overly enthused by them in the live setting, so the decision was made to make the next album “a really abrasive, loud record”, according to Gruff. “It’s definitely the first time our audience has influenced our music in that sense.” In addition, label boss Geoff Travis also told the band he’d like “one of those pop records like you used to make”.

You could argue that the resulting album ‘Hey Venus!’ wasn’t that abrasive or loud, but it was undoubtedly more pop than its immediate predecessor, and a lot shorter. In fact, at just 36½ minutes in length, it remains the shortest album in the band’s catalogue. For the longer-term fans, it signalled a sort-of return to what the band did best – a quick blast of largely unadorned psyche-infused rock-pop songs with an occasional twist that marked them uniquely as the product of Super Furry Animals.

To announce the new record, Show Your Hand was released as a single on 16th July 2007, though initially only as a download – a sign of where the music industry was heading.

mp3: Show Your Hand

It was an interesting choice for the lead single, not least because it hadn’t been included in the band’s first tracklist draft as they felt it sounded “too generic”. Geoff Travis disagreed, insisting it could be a single with a little bit of work. The addition of a French Horn to the mix finally convinced the band to include ‘Show Your Hand’ on the album.

For me, it’s a decent song, something not unlike the ‘Rings…’-era, but I sometimes sway towards the band’s original thoughts of it being a bit… normal. It has some nice touches though – the harpsichord for starters, and I’m a sucker for a gorgeous French Horn (oi, quiet at the back!) The critics all seemed to love it, but once again couldn’t agree on who it sounded like – The Beach Boys, The Zombies and Burt Bacharach were all bandied around, as was the term “classic Furries”, which let’s face it, is a bit of a lazy cop out.

Four weeks after the digital release, two physical formats were put out. The following week, Show Your Hand entered the UK chart at #46 which is as high as it got. It was only the band’s second single in 10 years not to crack the Top 40 (the other was Ysbeidiau Huelog which was a weird Welsh song only released on vinyl in very limited quantities). In fairness, it was probably due to the fact that as it had already been downloadable for a month, maybe the fans weren’t going to rush out and buy something they were already familiar with.

More fool them (if that were the case) as they missed out on the b-sides. Both 7” picture disc and CD formats included this track, originally demoed a few years earlier:

mp3: Alluminium Illuminati

One of the band’s best b-sides since the ‘Rings Around The World’ era. This one really is “classic Furries”, harking back to the days when glam rock was still a big part of their sound. I do wonder why it never made it onto ‘Hey Venus!’. It certainly had room for one more song, and this one wouldn’t have been out of place. A really good tune.

The CD single also included this track:

mp3: Never More

Not a homage to Edgar Allan Poe, but another of those psychedelic glam rock stompers we used to enjoy on a SFA flipside. Not really one for the album this, but those loud guitars they alluded to are prominent. The drums right at the start gave a hint as to what the next single would sound like…

Now, as I mentioned last week, bonus tracks are not so easy to come by for this period of the band’s career, not at the moment, anyway. So I find myself digging a little deeper than normal. That said, I’ve got two that might constitute a bonus 7” for you. The first, a live version of Show Your Hand from 2007’s Glastonbury Festival, a couple of weeks before the single’s release.

mp3: Show Your Hand [live at Glastonbury]

And the fact that Alluminium Illuminati was originally demoed for ‘Phantom Power’ means it was included in that album’s 20th Anniversary Edition package. It’s the fully-formed song, but minus the loud guitars, more an acoustic version. I think I prefer the later b-side version, personally…

mp3: Alluminium Illuminati [2002 demo]

Next week, we go all Phil Spector on your super furry arses…

 

The Robster

A guest series by The Robster

#24: Lazer Beam (2005, Epic, 676 011 7)

Ten years after Super Furry Animals released their first EP, they’d come a very long way. They had forged themselves a path that had put them at the very forefront of the Welsh music scene, had stomped a huge footprint in the overall music scene in the UK, and had carved a loyal following across Europe and the USA, and all while doing their own thing and refusing to follow trends, fashions and expectations.

But things were changing. Increased digitisation in the way people consumed music meant there were so many options and all of a sudden, you didn’t have to spend stupid amounts of cash and hours in record shops to find something different. All those obscure techno, psychedelic, indie, 70s rock records were available online without a great deal of effort. All of a sudden, Super Furry Animals were not sounding as “different” as they used to.

They still had plenty of magic mind, it’s just that some of the fanbase they picked up over the previous decade was moving on, and only the most loyal remained. Us faithful were going to be rewarded a few more times, and it started with a new single and album released in August 2005.

MP3: Laser Beam

I love this one. It’s so irresistibly catchy, and it has all those hallmarks of SFA that we love. It’s also a critique of the political and social state of the word at the time (and sadly, two further decades on, still is…) Gruff’s opening lines state:

“This song is daunted by a radical new vision, no more imperial colonial bastards, no more romantic comedies, this is a fanfare introduction to a high-powered, purposeful theme.”

The words “radical new vision”, as well as other phrases in the lyrics, refer to Tony Blair’s speech at the 2004 Labour Party Conference. “I’ve nicked that wholesale,” Gruff would explain. “But I am offering a radical new vision whereas he wasn’t.”

The song is further explained by Bunf thus:

“Today’s reality is insane so we may as well make our own. It’s about aliens coming down from space and zapping humans with amazing lazer beams that make them intelligent rather than being jerks. It’s obviously a highly unlikely scenario”.

Which is a shame, because the one thing our world needs right now is an alien invasion and intelligence. With our world so-called leaders intent on blowing each other up into oblivion (or rather, blowing us into oblivion while they’re safely tucked away in their underground nuclear bunkers safe from the chaos they’ve wreaked), and the ordinary people of the world becoming so disillusioned with it all they’d rather just soak up social media soundbites and bizarre conspiracy theories spouted by weirdos and billionaires (same thing?) rather than actually THINK about what is actually going on, the world is closer to being doomed than we ever thought possible when Laser Beam was released.

Anyway, the genesis of Lazer Beam lies way back during the ‘Guerrilla’ sessions when a track called John Spex was written, demoed and even mixed, but never actually finished. An attempt to revive it for ‘Rings Around The World’ failed to take it any further. But the band felt there was something in it that was worth persevering with, and it was finally reworked and transformed into the backing track for Lazer Beam.

It was the first – and as it turned out – only single from the band’s 7th studio album ‘Love Kraft’. It was also the last single they’d release with Epic/Sony, their contract ending with this album. Maybe that was why only the one track was put out as a single – Sony couldn’t be bothered to promote an act that was leaving them. Another shame, as there are some excellent tracks to be found on ‘Love Kraft’, even if it wasn’t as immediate, or even quite as enjoyable as its immediate two predecessors.

Laser Beam was also the last time the Super Furries would grace the Top 40 singles chart in the UK, peaking at #28 in its first week of release. There were plenty of critics who loved it, describing it as “an absolute powerhouse of a song”, “acid-carnivalesque” and “like a kids TV theme heard through an acid-pop filter”. One or two critics, however, defied the general consensus, but when you consider the NME called it “the worst Furries song ever” at a time when no one took the NME in the slightest bit seriously (and to be fair, no one has ever since), I think we can brush over the negatives. But, the fact that a band so universally loved was starting to attract some less than favourable reviews comes back to what I said at the start – things were beginning to change…

Lazer Beam was released on 7” and CD formats, both of which contained this upbeat little number:

MP3: Sunny Seville

I like this one a lot, but it is so unlike everything else on ‘Love Kraft’ it was always destined to be a b-side. It sounds like it’s a cover rather than an original, it’s so unlike a Super Furry Animals song. However, it might be a hint of what was to come…

The CD also contained this:

MP3: Colonise The Moon

An acoustic track with 60s psych infused into its DNA, and some birdsong. It’s a tad longer than it perhaps should be, but otherwise, both these tracks show an improvement in b-sides over the ‘Phantom Power’ period.

Now, bonus tracks. ‘Love Kraft’ celebrates its 20th birthday this year. At the point of writing, an anniversary edition has not been announced, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. It means there’s not a huge amount of bonus material to share (something that’s going to become more and more noticeable as we enter the final six weeks of the series), but at least with this single, I can turn to the various promos and collect together some bits and pieces.

MP3: Lazer Beam [radio edit]
MP3: Lazer Beam [Danger Mouse remix]

The Danger Mouse remix offers a radically different interpretation of the song, but I happen to like it. It even plays around with Gruff’s melody in the chorus. In the US, this version (listed as Lazerbeam) was released on a split 7” with a Danger Mouse remix of Easy/Lucky/Free by Bright Eyes.

Two more remixes, neither of which do an awful lot for me, especially the latter which is just rubbish:

MP3: Lazer Beam [DJ Marlboro remix]
MP3: Lazer Beam [LFO remix]

And finally, here’s the song that dates back to the ‘Guerilla’ sessions that eventually became this fine single:

MP3: John Spex [unfinished rough mix]

Next week – the post-Sony years commence…

 

The Robster

A guest series by The Robster

#23: The Man Don’t Give A Fuck – Live (2004, Epic, 675 304 6)

This week’s episode is short and sweet. Not because I’m getting bored, but because there’s not much to write about. The song in question was originally released in 1996 and thus has already been covered in this series back here, but here’s a version that was released as a single in September 2004:

MP3: The Man Don’t Give A Fuck [live at London’s Hammersmith Apollo]

I’m pretty sure that since 1995, there has not been a SFA live show where they haven’t performed this song. In fact, it became their de facto set closer. Essentially, the standard song would be played for around 5 minutes, before all but Cian would leave the stage. He would then continue the track in his own inimitable way with an extended electronic wig-out for as long as it took for the others to change into yeti costumes and bound back onto the stage to conclude the show for the final couple of minutes.

On this occasion at the Hammersmith Apollo (sorry, LONDON’s Hammersmith Apollo as it is stated on the sleeve, just to remind us what the most important musical city in the world is… Thanks BPI!), Cian’s solo part was extended even more than usual, the result being a version of The Man Don’t Give A Fuck lasting 20 minutes in length!

The original version set a chart record for the most number of f-bombs in a chart single. This was beaten a couple years later by Insane Clown Posse’s Fuck The World. The Furries’ title was reclaimed with this release, though I’m not sure how many times the word is used. Feel free to count them yourself and post in the comments if you have nowt better to do…

It was put out as a single to tie in with the impending release of ‘Super Furry Animals Songbook’, a compilation of the band’s singles a few weeks later. The studio version of The Man… was included on that album, not this live version, which itself was only produced in limited numbers. Only two formats were released in the UK, a 12” and a CD, both of which contained just the one track, no b-sides. Promo CDs, however, contained two edits – one with the swear words, and one, rather hilariously, without!

MP3: The Man Don’t Give A Fuck [live – edit]
MP3: The Man Don’t Give A Fuck [live – radio edit]

The lack of b-sides this week means I kind of feel like you’re being cheated, so I’ve dug out something from a bootleg I have. In 2004, Gruff and Bunf did some promotional performances while the band was on tour in the US. While in Denver, Colorado, they stopped by Twist & Shout Records to play an instore show. Included in their rather informal set was a song dating from the same period as The Man Don’t Give A Fuck, so I’ve decided to throw this one in today out of the kindness of my heart.

MP3: Gathering Moss [live in-store at Twist & Shout Records]

Next week, one of my faves.

 

The Robster

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

A guest series by The Robster

#21: Hello Sunshine (2003, Epic, 674360 7)

Let’s start with a song this week, shall we? Have a listen to this.

MP3: By The Sea – Wendy & Bonnie

Isn’t that lovely? I’m sure many of you will recognise at least part of that track (from teenage sibling duo Wendy & Bonnie’s only album ‘Genesis’ from 1969) owing to its first 30-odd seconds being sampled by Super Furry Animals as the intro to Hello Sunshine, the opening track on ‘Phantom Power’. Four months after the album’s release, a version of Hello Sunshine, sadly shorn of that intro, was released as the album’s second single.

MP3: Hello Sunshine [radio edit]

It’s a hazy, lazy little summery number about emerging from a period of darkness in one’s life and finding some joy again. Odd, really, considering the single was released in November just as the long nights were drawing in… It’s not my favourite SFA single, to be honest, I find it a bit ordinary, but it does have some pedal steel in it, and it was nice to hear that on a chart single at the time.

It has become something of a favourite among fans and not-really-fans for its line “I’m a minger/You’re a minger too”. For our overseas friends, minger is a Scottish word and defined as thus:

minger
/ˈmɪŋə/
noun : derogatory – informal
an unattractive or unpleasant person or thing.
“Why can’t anyone see that Spencer is a complete minger?”

It’s always bellowed very loudly by the audience at a SFA concert. The band has far better couplets in its arsenal (as I’ve pointed out a few times in this series) but for some reason, this one has stuck.

It’s also a song the band could have made a lot of money from when they were approached to use it in a Coca-Cola ad. However, thankfully, the band has far more morals and ethics than most musicians and turned them down flat. Gruff explained:

“We have never been a big selling band, but when it came to the crunch, we felt we couldn’t justify endorsing a product that may have had a part in violently suppressing some of its workers. For a moment, I thought that we could have done the advert and donated the money for their campaign for justice. Yet the thought of having to hear our song used to sell anything that exploits anyone for the worse turns my stomach.”

Despite the commercial potential of Hello Sunshine, it failed to set the charts alight. Perhaps if it had been put out during the summer months, it might have climbed higher than its actual chart peak of #31. It means a lot of people missed out on the b-sides. All formats – 7” picture disc, CD and DVD – had this:

MP3: Cowbird

The CD and DVD also included a third track:

MP3: Sanitizzzed

The former is an instrumental that belongs on some movie soundtrack or something. In the right context, it might be amazing, but I fail to get much out of it. The latter sounds like something the band would have done a few years earlier. It has that classic psyche-infused SFA-of-old sound, with a good melody and lots of la-la-las. And a dog. It’s clear why neither of these tracks appeared on the album, they just wouldn’t have fit anywhere.

So onto the bonus tracks:

MP3: Hello Sunshine [demo]
MP3: Hello Sunshine [Weevil remix]

The demo is wonderful and is my favourite version of the song. It’s even more laid-back than the final studio version, and features an extended bridge with extra lyrics that were eventually discarded. I also love what the band is doing in that part too. This really was a highlight of the 20th anniversary edition of ‘Phantom Power’.

I have to admit to quite liking the remix as well. It’s obviously very different, but it has its own charm and hazy warmth about it that makes it well worth a listen. It also retains the pedal steel, so a big tick for that! It featured on the remix album ‘Phantom Phorce’ along with another remix of Hello Sunshine which isn’t worth the effort as there are no recognisable parts of the original song in it, so I object to it being called a remix of anything and it won’t be posted here!

Anyway, next week, the third and final instalment of the Phantom Power singles, and it’s another special bumper post!

 

The Robster

A guest series by The Robster

#20: Golden Retriever (2003, Epic, 673906 7)

For album #6, Super Furry Animals went back to basics. After the ambitious lushness of ‘Rings Around The World’ and the huge number of songs they wrote for it (which resulted in four months of discussions and arguments over which songs would be included and which ones wouldn’t), the band made a decision not to over-complicate things for the next record. Initially, the plan was to write songs all based around the same unconventional guitar tuning: D-A-D-D-A-D. And while a batch of songs were written to that concept, it was felt to be too limiting over all, so that plan was abandoned. However, the other plan to not write as many songs and not tinker too much with them was adhered to.

Recording took place through the second half of 2002 in a Cardiff office block. The band worked through the nights so as not to disturb the other occupants of the building during the day. The resulting record, ‘Phantom Power’ was unleashed in the summer of 2003. The contrast to its immediate predecessor was stark – it had a much more stripped back sound and a more cohesive style. The one thing it did retain was a stack of great songs.

The public’s first taste of the new album was Golden Retriever, released just one week beforehand.

MP3: Golden Retriever

It was one of those songs written by Gruff on his acoustic guitar in the D-A-D-D-A-D tuning and has real echoes of the blues about it, not just in the musical structure, but in Gruff’s lyrics referencing the devil and the crossroads. It certainly has a more basic, raw feel to it than the songs on ‘Rings Around The World’, but those amazing backing vocals at the end of the chorus, that escalating “dryyyyyyyyyy” really sets the whole thing off for me. It’s that tinge of brilliance that runs through nearly everything the Furries ever did.

As for those lyrics – they’re about Gruff’s girlfriend’s two golden retrievers. Yes, even the lyrics were shorn of their obtuse, complex nature. Well, for the most part.

Golden Retriever remains one of the band’s highest charting singles, reaching number 13 in the UK. It was released on three formats – 7” picture disc, CD and DVD – all of which contained these two b-sides:

MP3: Summer Snow
MP3: Blue Fruit

Summer Snow is a country song which includes the eventual album’s title, suggesting it only missed out on the final cut somewhat narrowly. Blue Fruit, meanwhile sounds like a classic SFA psychedelic odyssey. It also sounds like a b-side, and not one of the quality we’d come to expect of the band over the years. Both these b-sides were issued in the US on a 7” single via Stop Smiling, “the magazine for high-minded lowlifes” according to itself, in 2004.

Now, the bonus tracks for the ‘Phantom Power’ singles will be drawn from both the 2002 demos issued with the 20th anniversary edition of the album, and the 2004 companion album ‘Phantom Phorce’ which contained remixes of each track alongside some cynical mock commentary by the fictional producer “Kurt Stern”.

MP3: Golden Retriever [demo]
MP3: Golden Retriever [Killa Kela remix]

The demo features Gruff solo with his voice double-tracked, one track being one line behind the other. The rest of the band contributes noisily towards the end. The remix comes courtesy of pioneering UK beatboxer Killa Kela, who strips away most of the instrumentation and replaces it with his own vocal-based beats. Kurt Stern can be heard at the end expressing his disappointment at the song’s subject matter.

As far as first singles go, Golden Retriever was a very decent introduction to Phantom Power. Sadly, it has been somewhat forgotten about due to the band’s next two singles becoming among their best loved.

Incidentally, that guitar tuning D-A-D-D-A-D was also used to compose the two short instrumental tracks on ‘Phantom Power’. Their titles? The clue is in there…..

 

The Robster

A guest series by The Robster

#19: It’s Not The End Of The World? (2002, Epic, 672175 6)

These days, when a band releases a new album, you get four or five “singles” released from it before it’s even out! It leaves very little left to discover when you do eventually get to hear the full record, and chances are all the best tracks have been out for weeks. Way back yonder, it was very different – one single, then the album, then two or three more singles to keep the album in consumers’ minds for a while longer.

Six months after ‘Rings Around The World’ hit the shelves, January 2002 in fact, a third and final single was issued from it. Now, as I said last week, ‘Rings…’ is not meant to be taken as a collection of individual songs, it is a proper old-fashioned album – it’s meant to be listened to as a whole. This might explain why the choice of singles from it were not exactly the best. If it were me, I’d have put out Sidewalk Serfer Girl, maybe an edit of Run! Christian, Run! if I could make it work, or even the brilliantly bonkers Receptacle For The Respectable. Instead, the band (or label, not sure who made those decisions) opted for this one:

mp3: It’s Not The End Of The World? [edit]

(The full album version was released across all formats, but I thought I’d post this ever-so-slightly shorter version which featured on a radio promo CD, never commercially issued anywhere! You’re welcome.)

For perhaps the first time, it’s a single that divided the critics, with the words “bland” and “a bit rubbish” being used in reviews, certainly not things the band had previously experienced. And I kind of get it. It was never a big fave of mine, though in the context of the album it’s OK, but I never would have had it down as a single.

As for what it’s about – Gruff described it as “a romantic song about getting old”, with lyrics touching on the very real possibility of human extinction. “When people talk about saving the world they’re really talking about saving humans. The reality is that humans are the problem […] maybe we’ll all die but the world’ll still be here, even if it’s a dark, singed piece of rock flying around the sun”.

A bit like the first of the singles from ‘Rings Around The World’, the b-sides to this one were better than the a-side. Again, there was no 7”, but the CD, cassette and DVD (yes, a DVD single!) all contained these two:

mp3: The Roman Road

mp3: Gýpsy Space Muffin

I have to say, while this period didn’t produce the best singles, some of the band’s very best b-sides exist here. The Roman Road is right up there with Patience, Edam Anchorman and Tradewinds as the best SFA songs you never heard. It’s a fabulous bit of country-rock with a very hummable chorus, glorious harmonies and some pedal steel – an instrument they’d work with more in the near future. The other b-side is perhaps a more conventional throwaway little thing, but it does have enough psychedelic glam-rock charm to lift it above the a-side in terms of interest.

Now, for your bonus tracks this week, a little bit of a special treat. I have a bootleg of Super Furry Animals playing in Chicago during their 2002 US tour. It’s an audience recording, but it sounds decent. Firstly, you’re getting a live version of today’s featured track which featured in the set:

mp3: It’s Not The End Of The World? [live at the Metro, Chicago]

As an added bonus, I’m giving you the track they closed that set with. Since the ‘Guerrilla’ sessions, Cian, Bunf, Guto and Daf had formed their own side project. They called themselves Das Koolies, and while their name was floated around in fans forums here and there, no one really knew if they actually existed. Over the years, Das Koolies made a number of electronic-heavy recordings, but never released anything. Until… in 2021, some years after SFA broke up, Das Koolies started releasing stuff, reworked and remixed from their horde. In 2023, they put out their debut album, which opened with a big-beat stomper called Best Mindfuck Yet. Where am I going with this? Well, more than two decades earlier, during that live show in Chicago, some of Super Furry Animals performed this as an encore:

mp3: Best Mindfuck Yet [live at the Metro, Chicago]

It’s an early version of the song that would otherwise remain locked in the Super Furry vaults for 20 years! Both these tracks have never been officially released, so enjoy. Again, you’re welcome.

 

The Robster

A guest series by The Robster

#18: (Drawing) Rings Around The World (2001, Epic, 671908 6)

The fifth Super Furry Animals album, ‘Rings Around The World’, was, and remains, my favourite SFA record. This, despite me really disliking its first single. The band really took advantage of the bigger budget they were afforded by their new label and the result was an album full of lush strings and orchestrations, coupled with an ambitious cinematic production. And, of course, some wonderful songs.

The original idea was to go all-in and make a double album called ‘Text Messaging Is Destroying The Pub Quiz As We Know It’, which, lets face it, is a brilliant title for a record. While that idea was scaled back somewhat, Gruff admitted he still wanted to go to excess. “We were trying to make a blockbuster album that was going to be like The Eagles. We were trying to make utopian pop music that had pretensions of being progressive and exciting.”

However you’d describe it, it cannot be denied that it still, to this day, sounds like a real triumph. It’s the band’s high-point, in my opinion. While we’re talking about my opinion, I think ‘Rings’ works as a whole, a wonderful album that should always be played from start to finish. It’s the sort of record that only really makes sense that way. This may be the reason then that I’ve always been disappointed by the choice of singles released from it. They don’t really cut it on their own. Of the three songs lifted, only one really ticks my boxes, and that’s today’s – the title track.

mp3: (Drawing) Rings Around The World

I love this one. On the surface, it sounds like a lot of fun, but actually has a rather concerning message. Following a discussion with his girlfriend’s father, Gruff wrote (D)RATW about an idea that came up regarding “all the rings of communication around the world. All the rings of pollution, and all the radioactivity that goes around. If you could visualize all the things we don’t see, Earth could look like some kind of fucked-up Saturn. And that’s the idea I have in my head – surrounded by communication lines and traffic and debris thrown out of spaceships.”

The song came together following a number of demos involving different members of the band (more on that later), and a collection of excerpts of phone calls the band made randomly to people around the world. See what they did there?

The critics gushed, as usual, though the one thing I’ve noticed in the course of writing this series is how music journalists love to compare whatever they’re reviewing to other things. Maybe it’s laziness, maybe it’s just to make it easier for readers, but quite often it can be very confusing if you read multiple reviews. That’s certainly true of (Drawing) Rings Around The World – no one could agree what it sounded like. Status Quo, ELO (again!), Beach Boys (again!), The Beatles, Wizzard, Cheap Trick… all were cited in the music press. Yet, to me, it’s the Super Furry Animals, no one else. OK, maybe a bit ELO, who have proven to be one of the band’s biggest influences…

Released in October 2001, it reached a disappointing #28 in the UK singles charts, but this should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following this series. Maybe it would have got higher if people had heard the b-side.

mp3: Edam Anchorman

Without a doubt, one of the band’s best b-sides, a big bold, anthemic tune which really deserved more than being tucked away on the flip of a single. It’s one for any mixtape/playlist if you’re looking for something that’s not obvious. Its lyrics also contain the title of the other b-side.

mp3: All The Shit U Do

This is basically a section of Edam Anchorman with the words “With all the shit you do” looped over and over, and some added bleeps and bloops from Cian. A bit of an odd one, all told.

A radio edit of the title track was issued on some promos, which simply shortens the intro and fades out early. You might as well have it for completion’s sake:

mp3: (Drawing) Rings Around The World [radio edit]

Which brings me to this week’s bonus track. I mentioned that several demos were made of (D)RATW during its composition. Each one is rather different, so rather than choose one, or post all three, I thought I’d pull together some bits and pieces of them and edit them together so you can hear the constituent parts of the song and how it all came together. It starts off with Cian’s electronic riff, followed by Gruff’s early solo take, then another run through with the full band. I’ve finished off by adding some of the phone call bits as well. It’s another Super Furry Sunday Exclusive!

mp3: (Drawing) Rings Around The World [demo amalgam]

Next week, the final single from ‘Rings Around The World’, and I’ve got another exclusive lined up for you…

 

The Robster

A guest series by The Robster

#17: Juxtaposed With U (2001, Epic, 671224 6)

All was not lost for Creation’s artists after the label’s demise. Sony Music held a large stake in Creation and subsequently offered deals to many of its former artists. Super Furry Animals signed to one of Sony’s subsidiaries Epic, with a deal that would allow them to release anything the label didn’t want elsewhere. Of course, the danger of being on a big label is the expected return of investment, and the Furries had been typically uncompromising, which is what made them unique.

When I first heard their debut single for Epic, I was crestfallen. I really didn’t like it. It sounded like the type of commercial ballad you’d hear on Radio 2, like the fucking Lighthouse Family or some similar trite pop-soul group who appealed to middle-class 30-something housewives who gave up listening to new music the day they turned 21. Yes, I was not impressed.

mp3: Juxtaposed With U

Maybe I was a bit harsh at the time, but it’s still my least favourite SFA single. The song was initially conceived as a duet. Bizarrely, first Brian Harvey of East 17, and then Bobby Brown, were approached to perform on it, but (thankfully) both turned the offer down, and Gruff sang both vocal parts using a vocoder on the verses. It was inspired (in part, at least) by the Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder track Ebony and Ivory. I don’t know anyone who admits to liking that song either.

Juxtaposed With U was released on 9th July 2001 and reached number 14 in the charts, the band’s third-highest chart placing. It came in just three formats: CD, cassette and 12” – the first SFA single to not be released on 7”. All three formats contained two b-sides that were (and still are) far, far superior to the a-side.

mp3: Tradewinds
mp3: Happiness Is A Worn Pun

If you cast your mind back to…. ooooh… June 2015 (yikes! Where did that time go???), you may remember I submitted a SFA Imaginary Compilation to this lovely place, consisting entirely of b-sides. I opened it with Tradewinds, which I remain very fond of. I described it as “a song that could (should) soundtrack your summer. A cool funky reggae sound with a hazy psychedelic bent.” I’ll leave it at that as that is exactly what it is.

I also included the brilliantly titled Happiness Is A Worn Pun on that same compilation, in which I wrote: “Bowie circa ‘Aladdin Sane’ could have written this. He’d have probably left out the Sasquatch though. Bit too strange even for Dave, I reckon. Both b-sides of Juxtaposed With U are still better than the lead track.” Again, nothing to add, your honour.

The band’s first major label album was just around the corner. I prayed that Juxtaposed With U wasn’t illustrative of the record. I needn’t have worried. Turns out it was their greatest work, an album I adore and still listen to with much fondness. It’s just a shame I had such a negative introduction to it.

This week’s bonus track is a remix of Juxtaposed by San Fransiscan producer/DJ Walt Liquor. It strips the whole thing back, concentrating on Gruff’s vocal, and giving it something of a laid-back R&B vibe. While it’s not very Furry-like, it is something of an improvement on the original.

mp3: Juxtaposed With U [Walt Liquor Mystic remix]

Don’t worry – next week’s single is brilliant!

 

The Robster

A guest series by The Robster

#16: Ysbeidiau Huelog (2000, Placid Casual, PLC002)

Despite all the label’s successes, Creation Records went under in 2000, just as Super Furry Animals had another album ready to go, less than a year after the previous one. While it was originally planned that Creation would release it, it turns out that, according to the band, the label didn’t really want it, and coupled with the decision to end Creation, the band was allowed to buy the rights for £6,000.

And so it was, that in May 2000, Super Furry Animals released ‘Mwng’, their first album performed entirely in the Welsh language. But that wasn’t the reason why it was so different to what came before it. Despite being rather experimental in places, ‘Guerrilla’ was thought of by the band as their pop record, and so were hugely disappointed at the lack of hits it produced. So for ‘Mwng’, they went on “pop strike” as they called it, making a record they wanted to make with no pretensions of it actually doing anything sales-wise.

It’s quite a contradictory record. It was recorded live with few embellishments and was all wrapped up in a fortnight. But while the songs were typically melodic and upbeat, the lyrics were often dark and brooding, owing to Gruff having experienced a difficult period in his life. And despite the Welsh language medium, Gruff also admits that “musically there’s nothing Welsh about it at all”, with the album owing more to US West Coast pop and psychedelic bands of the 1960 than the Furries’ homeland.

A fortnight before ‘Mwng’ was on the shelves, a single was released. But, in keeping with not playing the industry’s games, and being free to release whatever they wanted, however they wanted, only a limited 7” white vinyl format was put out.

mp3: Ysbeidiau Huelog

Ysbeidiau Huelog (pronounced uh-spadey-eye hay-loag; trans: Sunny Intervals) is a song about “looking back at a bad time which had the odd good moment”, and features a saxophone, something the band had previously considered “the Devil’s instrument”! It’s an interesting one, as so much of it has Super Furry Animals written all over it, yet at the same time, shares very little with anything the band had done before. In fact, it stuck out on ‘Mwng’ like a sore thumb. “If there’s any song that doesn’t sum up the album, it’s that one,” according to Gruff. It has been compared to ELO and Roxy Music, though I’m not sure I’m hearing that myself.

The sole b-side was recorded for a John Peel session just 2 months before the single’s release. As far as I know, it remains the only recorded version of the song, and it was only available on this single until the ‘Live At The BBC’ box set was put out in 2018. A curious choice for a b-side really, but a lot of fun – a riot, actually – and sounds nothing like the single or its parent album. It reminds me a bit of Man…Or Astroman?.

mp3: Charge

Owing to its very limited (and by now almost obsolete) format, Ysbeidiau Huelog only peaked at number 89 in the UK singles charts, but critically it was praised to the rafters. To be fair, that was par for the course – everyone loved Super Furry Animals, it’s just that not enough people bought their records. ‘Mwng’ faired better chart-wise. It entered the chart at #11, becoming the first Welsh language album to make the UK top 20, and going on to become the biggest selling Welsh language album of all time.

No further singles were released from ‘Mwng’, making it one of the band’s lowest-key records, and as a result, their most sadly overlooked. So I’m going to give you two bonus tracks this week. Think of it as the second part of a 7” double-pack, if you like. Firstly, a live version of Ysbeidiau Huelog recorded at All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2000. Someone once ripped me a copy of a bootleg they had called ‘One Night Stand’. I know nothing about the performance, location or date, other than it was probably around 2002 owing to the track listing. Anyway, it contains a version of Nythod Cacwn (trans. Wasps Nests) that has never been officially released, so there’s your exclusive for this week.

mp3: Ysbeidiau Huelog [live]
mp3: Nythod Cacwn [live]

In spite of their resistance to ‘The Man’, the band’s next move was to actually sign to a major label. Luckily for us, it would result in arguably the best Super Furry Animals record ever…

 

The Robster

 

A guest series by The Robster

#15: Do Or Die (2000, Creation Records, CRE329)

Goodness me, we’re halfway through the series already. Not sure if we have any readers left, but we’re going to get through it regardless.

Some 7 months after the release of ‘Guerrilla’, and into the next year, a third single was finally lifted from the album. What took them so long? Well, the delay could be explained by problems at Creation. Following their US tour in 1999, Super Furry Animals returned home expecting preparations to have been made for their next choice of single – Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home). However, no such work had been done, and the band went out on tour again. On returning from Europe, they found Creation was being dissolved, and had completely changed tack with the proposed single. Firstly, Night Vision was lined up, but then it was decided it would be this:

mp3: Do Or Die

It was a bit of a strange choice. Firstly, it clocks in at just short of 2 minutes. Secondly, it’s not the most obvious of cuts for single release. Indeed, the band themselves were bemused by the decision. Nevertheless, it would be one of the final releases on the Creation label, coming out in January 2000. The traditional post-Christmas lull would propel Do Or Die to number 20 in the UK singles chart. The band performed it on Top Of The Pops, making it the shortest song to ever appear on the show, which is quite a surprising fact. It was also reviewed by the Wannadies in Melody Maker, who awarded it “all the points we can afford” and made it their Single Of The Week.

The 7”, cassette and promo 12” all came backed by this:

mp3: Missunderstanding (sic)

Another OK tune with echoes of the band’s past. I like it, but it wasn’t really in keeping with the other stuff on ‘Guerrilla’, so little surprise it was a b-side. The same can be said of the CD bonus track:

mp3: Colorblind

This one bugs me just because of the American spelling…

And so to this week’s bonus track. No surprises here – it’s the demo of Do Or Die.

mp3: Do Or Die [demo]

Next week, if you’re still hanging around, we begin the second half of the series much as we started the first – with a SFA 7” in the Welsh language!

 

The Robster

*JC adds…….couldn’t agree more

A guest series by The Robster

#14: Fire In My Heart (1999, Creation Records, CRE323)

You’d think, given their nature of twisted psychedelia, the one thing Super Furry Animals wouldn’t have in their armoury was a big, lighters-out, arms-in-the-air torch song. But as ever, this band confounded expectation, and the second single to be released from ‘Guerrilla’ was exactly that.

mp3: Fire In My Heart

Remember when I said the thing that disappointed me about If You Don’t Want Me To Destroy You was how it just sounded so ordinary? I suppose you could make a similar argument about Fire In My Heart. It’s one of the most straightforward songs in the band’s catalogue, even using what Gruff Rhys himself described as “clichéd lyrics”. Yet Fire In My Heart is a delight.

Originally titled Heartburn, it is, according to Gruff, a country song delivering “soul advice” about “all kinds of people in your life”. But despite its “normalness”, it has its quirks. The lyrics in the bridge, for instance, include: “The monkey puzzle tree has some questions for the watchdogs of the profane”, which by anyone’s standards isn’t what you’d expect from a clichéd country song. Then there’s the big key change at the end, the biggest cliché of the lot, but totally unexpected here. It is a SFA song, after all.

As was becoming common, the critics fawned over it, but the record-buying public were ambivalent. Fire In My Heart reached its chart peak of #25 the week after its release in August 1999. Shocking. If anyone ever wondered where I lost my faith in human nature, you don’t have to look much further.

So what of the other songs on the single? The 7” and cassette had this one:

mp3: Mrs Spector

An interesting one, I can’t say whether or not it’s about Ronnie, though I doubt it. But that chorus – shades of (1990s) Cardiacs perhaps?

This next one was the b-side of the 12” promo, and the extra track on the CD single:

mp3: The Matter Of Time

Apparently, this was initially going to be on ‘Guerrilla’, but the band felt it would make the album “too self-indulgent”. They replaced it with The Teacher in the final cut, a track they refer to as the “silly song”. Not sure that I’m entirely on board with that logic, but it’s not the strongest track in their canon, as pleasant as it is.

This week’s bonus track is the demo version of Fire In My Heart, an interesting take if far from polished.

mp3: Fire In My Heart [demo]

But wait! There’s more. You see, this isn’t just about those officially-released singles. I’m a bit of a nerdy completist, you know. Shortly after this release, Creation slipped out a one-sided 12” promo containing one of the album’s more peculiar, experimental songs. Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home) was written around a phone ringtone, with the rhythm track being based on a sample of bassist Guto Pryce tripping over a lead while Huw Bunford played a note on his guitar.

I’m not totally sure of the reasons behind the promo being sent out, but as next week’s article explains, there was a plan to release this track as the next single. The album version (and the one on the promo) was a trimmed-down edit lasting 5½ minutes. However, today, I’m going to create my own 12” promo, using the full uncut version and the demo.

I spoil you lot, I really do.*

mp3: Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home) [unedited]
mp3: Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home) [demo]

Oh, and this article is dedicated to MrsRobster. Today is our 21st Wedding Anniversary. I still very much have a Fire In My Heart for her.

The Robster

*JC adds…….apart from jumping in to wish the Mr and Mrs Robster the happiest of wedding anniversaries, I did want to echo the sentiment that we are being very spoiled right across this series with the b-sides, demos and mixes, topped off today with a cleverly crafted and creative offering.

A guest series by The Robster

#13: Northern Lites (1999, Creation Records, CRE314)

One of the main tracks on the Super Furry Animals’ last release was a reggae track. On their return the following year, they stayed rooted in the Caribbean as they adopted a calypso sound for a song about the weather.

mp3: Northern Lites

Northern Lites was written by Gruff Rhys, and was particularly inspired by news coverage of El Niño throughout the previous year. The song’s title refers to the Aurora Borealis, which the band believed they had seen but, as no one else was present, they could not get confirmation that what they had witnessed was not simply a “Furry fantasy”. Gruff has said that the song is “about asking Jesus if he decides to seek his revenge on us, to get it over with as soon as possible and blow us away to the Northern Lights” but denied it as being about questioning one’s faith. “It’s just about the weather,” he would confirm.

While the embryo of Northern Lites had been written some years previously, the band’s inspiration of the weather phenomenon affecting Latin America, led to them playing along to a preset calypso rhythm track. The steel drums were added on the spur of the moment after seeing the instruments lying around Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios while recording the new album. Despite having no knowledge of how to play them, Cian gave them a go and created that distinctive Caribbean feel that runs through the final song.

The result is a track that was much loved and well received by the critics, gaining favourable comparisons to Burt Bacharach and the Beach Boys. It’s true, those backing vocals are wonderful. It became – and has remained – the highest charting single in SFA’s catalogue, reaching #11 in the UK in May 1999. It’s one of those that, while I may not immediately pick it out as a career highlight, each time I listen to it, I do find it kind ofirresistiblee. The rhythm, the tune, those harmonies, the steel drums, the blasts of Tijuanana brass – it all seems to meld perfectly together. Perhaps I really should rate it higher.

The 7” and cassette contained this as it’s flip side:

mp3: Rabid Dog

Not on a par with the A-side, obviously, but definitely something that made you realise how good this band was, that a track like Rabid Dog would be relegated to mere b-side status. It’s a bit of fun, with echoes of the band’s earliest sound alongside their trademark psychedelic tendencies. And there’s a bit about cuttlefish in there, which merely adds to it, I reckon…

The CD single format added a third track, which could also be found on a 12” promo in place of Rabid Dog:

mp3: This, That And The Other

This one is a 6-minute, laid-back, keyboard-led bit of psychedelic melancholy. Hazy, lazy, tripped-out summer vibes, which is completely instrumental for its first half, before Gruff’s vocal comes in, does its bit, and ends on a continuous loop of “are we dying” through the minute-long fade. Yes, b-side material of course, but more interesting than many bands’ a-sides throughout 1999 for sure!

Your bonus tracks over the next few weeks will be from the demos recorded for the third Super Furry Animals album ‘Guerrilla’. Today, you get the demo of Northern Lites – which as you can hear, wasn’t half the song it turned out to be – and a silly little solo Gruff thing that came to nothing, but has a certain charm.

mp3: Northern Lites [demo]
mp3: Vermillionaire [demo]

‘Guerrilla’ was released in June 1999 and was a very different SFA record in many ways. One of its very best songs would be issued as its next single…

The Robster

A guest series by The Robster

#12: Ice Hockey Hair (1998, Creation Records, CRE288)

Brace yourselves – this is a biggie.

How could Super Furry Animals follow up two incredible years, during which they went from almost unknowns to critics’ darlings and Premier League Britpoppers spearheading the Cool Cymru scene? Well although 1998 was to be a relatively quiet year for the band, they did happen to put out of the best singles of the decade. Don’t just take my word for it:

“brilliant, predictably freakish weirdness” – Melody Maker
“[demonstrate’s SFA’s] placid casual grasp of the concept of genius” – Vox
“Single Of The Week” – NME
“could be the most perfect thing you’ll ever set ears upon” – Drowned In Sound

mp3: Ice Hockey Hair
mp3: Smokin’

The Ice Hockey Hair EP simply put any remaining doubters firmly in their place and nailed their feet to the floor. There are those who might still argue this was Super Furry Animals at their absolute peak and they never reached such heights again. I’d argue against that, but I can see where they’re coming from. The two lead tracks sound nothing alike, yet neither could be anyone other than Super Furry Animals.

The title track is utter madness. Imagine throwing Badfinger, Queen, ELO, Elton John, techno music and a huge barrel of LSD into a mixing pot to see/hear what happens. The answer, my friends, might sound a bit like Ice Hockey Hair. It’s 7 minutes of 70s-infused wonder, never knowing exactly where it’s going to take you next. It totally threw me the first time I heard it, but after a couple more plays I was devoted to it. To this day, it sounds like nothing else ever recorded.

Smokin’ takes us to a completely different place. It is rooted in dub reggae and samples the flute part of Black Uhuru’s I Love King Selassie. In fact the song was created by jamming along to that sample on loop. There’s no cryptic message to this one – it’s about smoking marajuana, pure and simple. It’s another example of a band who had so many strings to their bows, they could never decide which string to twang next.

The two songs which led the EP were felt to be a good fit for a stand-alone single as the band knew they didn’t belong on ‘Radiator’ while also feeling the direction they were heading towards for the next album wasn’t suitable either. They were both issued on 7” and cassette on 25th May 1998. Also released on that date were CD and 12” formats that contained two additonal songs.

mp3: Mu-Tron
mp3: Let’s Quit Smoking

Mu-Tron is a Cian Ciaran-penned instrumental (though there are some vocal sounds), named after the company who made music effects equipment in the 1970s. Let’s Quit Smoking is a short acoustic remix of Smokin’.

Ice Hockey Hair became the band’s highest charting single at the time, reaching #12 in the UK rundown, which is still ridiculously low considering Oasis were still having number ones with their tired, bloated dad-rock. SFA were taking pop music to another level, but the record buying public wanted their music to stay in the gutter.

Now – I said at the start this would be a biggie. I wasn’t joking – I haven’t finished yet. You see, while in the process of putting this post together and looking for a bonus track, I realised that I had enough versions of the songs from this EP to actually compile another EP altogether. So, a bonus EP this week – how does that sound?

mp3: Ice Hockey Hair [radio edit]

You might call this sacrilege, but at the end of the day, radio would never play the full version of the title track, so surely you’d prefer a 4-minute version over nothing at all? Besides, it’s actually not that bad. All the key elements are there, though there is a bit of a harsh edit at around the 2½ minute mark (where the dreamy Beach Boys-y bit should be) that jars a little. This version was issued on some CD promos.

mp3: Smokin’ [edit]

I don’t actually know where this edit comes from. I can’t find any reference of it, but here it is anyway. To be fair, the only thing that spoils Smokin’ for me is its length. It does go on a bit in its repeated “I just wanna smoke it” section, so this version actually puts that right for me.

mp3: Smoke
mp3: Dim Ysmygu (trans: No Smoking)

Two remixes of Smokin’. The latter starts off as a dub version, but quickly turns into a drum ‘n’ bass monster with an electric violin in it! I think someone let Cian run riot in the studio…

mp3: Naff Gan

Believe it or not, Ice Hockey Hair was demoed for ‘Radiator’, and this is it. It was called Naff Gan at the time as the band thought it had so many cheesy (naff) bits in it. It’s quite different to the final version, with different lyrics and melody, but the main guitar riff is already in place.

mp3: Smokin’ [Dave Clarke mix]

Not sure if this is an early take or a remix, but it doesn’t sound like the fully-fledged EP version, and even has some alternative lyrics. It was also first issued in 1997 on some magazine free CD, which hints that it was still a work-in-progress at the time.

And to finish off, if a bonus EP isn’t enough for you, then you‘re just spoilt and greedy. Nevertheless, I’m going to toss this one into the mixer as well – the song that was sampled and became the basis for Smokin’:

mp3: I Love King Selassie – Black Uhuru

Don’t ever accuse me of not being a generous old fool. Next week, we reach third album territory, and yet another new sound for the Furries.

 

The Robster

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