Published on Sep 2, 2003
The Super Furry Animals. Whether you love them or loathe them,
you have at least heard of them. This bunch have been proving to
the world for the better part of a decade that Tom Jones was an
accident, and that Welsh music has a lot to offer. Summer 2003 saw
the release of their latest and greatest creation —
Phantom Power.
Upon release,
Phantom Power was greeted with love and superlatives. We
would expect nothing less of a band that brought to us such songs
as the fantastic “Juxtaposed Wit U” and the ever-memorable “The Man
Don’t Give A Fuck.” Indeed, we would expect nothing less of an
album that is their most coherent to date, whilst maintaining the
Furries’ tendencies to experiment with their attitude and
delivery.
Phantom Power opens with “Hello Sunshine,” which, to be
honest, is in the kind of mellow, swooning manner that the Furries
have been tweaking and perfecting for years. Lead singer Gruff’s
voice is as bittersweet as ever, draping deep, brown tones over a
bright and colourful musical backdrop. With “Hello Sunshine” still
fresh in our ears, the album moves on to “Liberty Belle.” As such,
the track is typical of the album as a whole — the lyrics may play
with anti-American imagery (“You know we’re diggin’ to hell /
Drowning in our oil wells”) but the music remains defiantly upbeat,
serving to bring us a provoking and, most importantly, infectiously
likeable song.
As with albums from their ludicrously underrated back-catalogue,
Phantom Power jumps from style to style. This time, however,
we the listener make the jump very comfortably with the Furries,
whereas in the past we may have felt inclined to watch them jump
but keep our feet firmly planted.
Phantom Power retains a subtle coherency whilst covering
approaches ranging from post-punk (“Out Of Control”) to electronica
(“Slow Life”), from sing-along rock (fantastic first single “Golden
Retriever”) to melancholy anthems (“Bleed Forever”). Gruff
demonstrates his mastery of a variety of singing styles, and his
lyrics dwell from anti-American (or anti-Bush) commentaries to
pearls of wisdom from curious advisors (“Venus & Serena”).
It’s no exaggeration to claim that the Super Furry Animals are
perhaps the most credible band around at the minute — they manage
to deliver profound and memorable music without falling into the
trap of taking themselves too seriously, and their sound is both
rich and simple. Set-opener “Slow Life,” which features as the last
track on
Phantom Power, is the sound of the band finding their feet
so perfectly: Indulging in a computer-generated intro and breaking
into rock and orchestral arrangements respectively. The band on
their album have said that they finally found out how to intergrate
technology without alienating their own sound (a criticism often
levelled at previous album
Rings Around The World), and, moreover, that they set out to
draw a horse and eventually drew a horse, having drawn cows and
other such creatures in attempts of old.
Phantom Power is the kind of fresh-but-mature sound that
could only be brought to you by a band that have been there and
come back again in a musical sense. It is frankly a tremendous tour
de force of Super Furriness. If only all bands could achieve such a
pinnacle.