20. Super Furry Animals – Dark Days/Light YearsEveryone loves the Super Furry Animals; it’s just a crying shame that most people don’t seem to realise it. Since 1996’s Fuzzy Logic- and seemingly without asking anyone’s permission- they’ve steadily built up a body of work that fully deserves to be ranked alongside any British band that still likes to think of themselves of a going concern, and yet have never truly threatened to breakthrough and sell any records beyond their devoted admirers (fact- every SFA album so far has sold exactly 172’027 copies each, which is the exact size of their fan base). Their ninth album was never likely to change that- being more of the same peculiarly Welsh brand of fried indie-rock psychadelica which they’ve made their own,-but it’s probably their best since 1999’s Guerrilla (or ‘Their best in a decade’ if you think that would look more eye-catching on the posters) and exhibits the kind of sparkle, energy and ingenuity you’d usually associate with barely pubescent bands who buy their trousers in a can, rather than a dishevelled band of cagoule wearing Welshman who generally look like the kind of provincial loners you see on local news being charged with sending threatening letters to Fiona Phillips.
The highlights of Dark Days… are among the highlights of the band’s entire career: ‘Mt’ is a commendably restrained attempt to invent glam-folk, ‘The Very Best of Neil Diamond’ somehow manages to live up to the glory of its title by being a dark-tinged pop masterpiece with a hook on it so large you could hang you cagoule on it, and the album is bookended by ‘Crazy Naked Girls’ and ‘Pric’, two tracks that pull off that rare trick of being psychedelic jams and not making you want to clean out your ears with sandpaper. ‘Inaugural Trams’, however, is the album’s (and, in terms of singles, possibly the year’s) one indisputable classic, and can probably be considered one of the top ten songs ever written about the construction of a German town’s transport system. It’s both admirably insane and endlessly inventive, and in proving that it’s possible to sound deliriously happy without sounding either hackneyed or inane it sounds like the theme tune to the coolest children’s TV show ever. As a bonus, it also gives new credence to that old phrase ‘Why have a guitar solo when you can just rope in the guitarist from Franz Ferdinand for a few lines of German spoken word?’
While the highs on Dark Days… are positively Snowdonian, they do cast a shadow that certain parts of the album can’t help but wither in. While it’d be harsh to call any of the tracks here truly bad, it’s fair to say the skip button on your remote control will be getting a work out as the likes of ‘Inconvenience’, ‘Where Do You Wanna Go?’ and ‘Lilwiau Llachar’ (The inevitable Welsh song) just sound pedestrian and uninventive in their stellar company, giving the album a slightly uneven feel, and hold the record back from being truly great.
The highlights of Dark Days… are among the highlights of the band’s entire career: ‘Mt’ is a commendably restrained attempt to invent glam-folk, ‘The Very Best of Neil Diamond’ somehow manages to live up to the glory of its title by being a dark-tinged pop masterpiece with a hook on it so large you could hang you cagoule on it, and the album is bookended by ‘Crazy Naked Girls’ and ‘Pric’, two tracks that pull off that rare trick of being psychedelic jams and not making you want to clean out your ears with sandpaper. ‘Inaugural Trams’, however, is the album’s (and, in terms of singles, possibly the year’s) one indisputable classic, and can probably be considered one of the top ten songs ever written about the construction of a German town’s transport system. It’s both admirably insane and endlessly inventive, and in proving that it’s possible to sound deliriously happy without sounding either hackneyed or inane it sounds like the theme tune to the coolest children’s TV show ever. As a bonus, it also gives new credence to that old phrase ‘Why have a guitar solo when you can just rope in the guitarist from Franz Ferdinand for a few lines of German spoken word?’
While the highs on Dark Days… are positively Snowdonian, they do cast a shadow that certain parts of the album can’t help but wither in. While it’d be harsh to call any of the tracks here truly bad, it’s fair to say the skip button on your remote control will be getting a work out as the likes of ‘Inconvenience’, ‘Where Do You Wanna Go?’ and ‘Lilwiau Llachar’ (The inevitable Welsh song) just sound pedestrian and uninventive in their stellar company, giving the album a slightly uneven feel, and hold the record back from being truly great.
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