The Super Furry Animals Thread

[Paul Monk]

Sorted now. I needed to try again once I'd registered.

[Dino]

All sort of circumstances and rar. problems have meant I still haven't enough money to download.
Am resigned to buying on april 16th then.
If it's not too much trouble could you post your review of Dark Days/Light Years if you've got the album, please?

Thanks in advance

[Rob McCow]

I think I need to listen to it a few more dozen times first!

Stand out pop tracks are probably Inaugural Trams and Helium Hearts.

[Rob McCow]

It's a very interesting album. In many ways it's more like Fuzzy Logic than any other SFA album. Although Fuzzy Logic crossbred with Hendrix and Stones styling.

It doesn't help that the opening track is possibly one of their weakest ever. Crazy Naked Girls is a great curveball, full of wailing and distorted guitar. It lasts over six minutes, whereas most of their previous openers have been tiny little tracks to allow you to adjust to 'Furryvision' or to act as a gateway song. There's no such compromise here!

If you survive Crazy Naked Girls, then Mt is much more familiar. Hearing the word 'F**king' in such a sweet, traditional sounding SFA song is a bit of jolt. Apart from that it's an amiable, repetitive, awesome groove.

Moped Eyes is almost the title track of the album, coming in with a (dull?) drumbeat on which are built some fab guitar grooves. Yes, it's the electric guitar! This isn't quite SFA in rock mode, but it's close.

Inaugural Trams is a bouncy 'Woo yay!' of a song. With rapping in German!

The guitars really take over for the next two songs, Inconvenience and Cardiff In the Sun, the latter of which is a heavy epic of a track, the former an alternate take on Golden Retriever with whooping and swirling guitar.

Then you get The Very Best of Neil Diamond, which is completely different to anything the SFA have done before. Marrying THAT song title with Indian / Eastern guitar and droning synths is quite, quite brilliant.

Things brighten up with Helium Hearts, the sunshine open-top love song of the pack.

White Socks/Flip Flops is another fab rocker, with Gruff taking a back seat and allowing the harmonies to take over. There's a brilliant double bill after that, of Where Do You Wanna Go? and Lliwiau Llachar. First you get the song in English - then you get it in Welsh! Everyone's happy.

Closing the album is the third epic, Pric. Although not as immediate, this is a worthy successor to Slow Life, a huge and awesome track.

Probably haven't done justice to the album there, but it gives you an idea anyway!

[Rob McCow]

Gruff Rhys in movie distribution deal search!

Gruff Rhys is best known and the frontman and main songwriter for psychedelic rockers Super Furry Animals, as well as his solo outings and his recent Mercury Music Prize nominated collaboration act Neon Neon. However, Soundtrack is pleased to welcome Gruff to this year's festival as a film maker, as alongside his co-director Dylan Goch, Gruff Rhys will present the premier of his new movie Separado!
SEPARADO!
Star Trek meets Buena Vista Social Club in this psychedelic western musical as Welsh pop legend Gruff Rhys takes us on a pan continental road trip in search of his long lost Patagonian uncle, the poncho wearing guitarist Rene Griffiths.
In 1880, following a controversial horse race that led to an unresolved death, Gruff Rhys' family split as Dafydd Jones took his young family to join the burgeoning Welsh community in Patagonia, South America. There was to be no contact between the families for almost a century when in 1974 Rene Griffiths arrived in Wales with his Latin infused Welsh love songs and became an overnight sensation.
Director Dylan Goch follows Gruff Rhys on a tour that takes in the theatres, nightclubs and desert teahouses of Wales, Brazil and the Argentine Andes as he discovers what became of his family, the Welsh Diaspora and its musical legacy.
The Premiere of Separado! will be followed by a Q&A featuring Gruff Rhys, co-director Dylan Goch and Guardian journalist and author Will Hodgkinson.

http://www.soundtrackfilmfestival.com/events/event:54

I would like to see this, but I have no idea whether it will be any good or not. The soundtrack should be pretty good though!

[Rob McCow]

New Gruff Song -

Shark Ridden Waters

[Dino]

Yes! I know we had a thread about this band.
Although their official website has been down for some weeks apparently there's going to be a big announcement tomorrow morning at 10am.
I'll be amazed if it's a new album, slightly relived but disappointed if they're saying they've broke up for good.
Or be on the phone waiting to book tickets if there's another tour.
But yes! SFA activity at last!