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GUERILLA
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So furry, so good?
Up until a couple of months ago, Super Furry Animals were a group I'd heard about, but never heard. Then a friend played me a track from their B-sides compilation, Out Spaced, that sampled and looped a Steely Dan track - "y'know they don't give a fuck about anybody else" ("Show Biz Kids", on the album Countdown To Ecstasy, fact fans - get on with it, Mark - HeadCleaner). I thought it was excellent - a well-conceived detail, executed with a sureness of touch which boded well. "Northern Lites" - the lead single from their new album Guerrilla - is so full of delightful details that you can listen to it a hundred times and still be entranced. Well, I can, anyway. I bought it on a whim (hey, it was £1.99) and haven't stopped playing it since. It's a strange but immediate stew of fuzz guitar and salsa swing, kettle drums and soulbrass, topped off with a tune that I personally will still be humming when I'm 70. No idea what it's about - I could be singing a hymn to the extermination of anti-apartheid campaigners for all I know - but I don't really care. It's been included on my virtual compilation of best tracks ever (the full listing is available on request, if you're really stuck for something better to do - normally, I'd love to, but I've got to run off and watch my lawn grow - HeadCleaner). So, having been blown away, I was obviously keen to get the album. And I'm pleased I did. All - OK, most - of the tracks display the same imagination and musical deftness that I'd come to expect, based on the two I'd previously heard. But "Northern Lites" stands out, or perhaps I should say, it sticks out - like it's fallen through a warp in the space-time continuum from a SFA album about two years in the future. That album is the one I'd really like to hear - the one where their eclecticism sounds less like dilettantism. On Guerrilla, they jump around a fair bit, but don't really stray too far from their indie-guitar roots. It might sound like it on first listening - the beautiful analogue synth (OK, I'm guessing) on "Some Things Come From Nothing" (sounding somewhat like Spiritualized, only better), the combination of Hawaiian guitar and kettle drums (again) with sprays of drum'n'bass beats on "The Door To This House Remains Open", or The Beach Boys meets ambient of "Chewing Chewing Gum". But those are the exceptions. Now, don't get me wrong. Most of the tracks are pretty good, and a few are more than that. The aforementioned "Some Things ..." and "Chewing Chewing Gum; "The Turning Tide", a ballad to ... well, something, I'm sure (and it must be a ballad 'cos it's got strings); "Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)", a clattering jeer at people with mobile phones ("Tumour on the brain, Status symbol disease says, I've got a mobile phone"); "Do Or Die", straight-ahead in the tradition of Jonathan Richman or The Ramones, decorated with synth squeaks; all of these are worth listening to more than once. But maybe it was expecting too much to hope that the whole album would be packed with goodness. I can't help thinking that if they'd cut out a few tracks - you get 14, just under 60 minutes - and concentrated on the remainder, it would have turned out better. Prime candidates for eradication would have to be the pointless fillers - "Check It Out", one and a half minutes of pointless introductory fluff at the start of the album, "A Specific Ocean", almost a minute of plodding .. nothing, and "The Sound Of Life Today", twenty-odd seconds of keyboard noodles. All considered, not a bad album. I'll be investigating their back catalogue - if only to get that track with the Steely Dan sample. And I heartily recommend, whatever your previous opinions of SFA (are you listening, Keith? - eh? whassat? someone say something? - HeadCleaner), that you at least try and hear "Northern Lites" (look, it really is fantastic, honest). But what I'm really waiting for is the album that "Norther= n Lites" seems to have come from. Now that would be special. 7/10 Mark Vardy |