Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years

SUPER FURRY ANIMALS
Dark Days/Light Years

One guesses that, if they wanted to, Super Furry Animals could fill stadiums. For 13 years they have effortlessly penned the kind of rock/pop melodies that most bands would kill for, yet have always had an edgier, playful side that sees them do what the fuck they want with flagrant disregard for commercial success. Three-minute ballads invariably have five-minute techno freakouts bolted on the end of them, some of their songs are sung exclusively in Welsh and, when Paul McCartney appeared on one of their previous albums, they chose not to have him singing, but simply crunching celery into a microphone.

And so it is no surprise that their 9th studio album, Dark Days/Light Years, is another slice of unhinged genius. Crazy Naked Girls, a six-minute pysch-jam with dance sensibilities, opens the record and Pric, a similarly sprawling effort, ends it. Twixt the two, Inaugural Trams features Nick McCarthy from Franz Ferdinand rapping in German. Like many of SFA’s ideas, it sounds ridiculous, and shouldn’t work, yet it does, brilliantly. Elsewhere, the record bursts with straightforward pop gems, like the Jim Noir-esque Where Do You Wanna Go? and the massive chorus of Helium Hearts, during which front man Gruff-Rhys’ vocal soars alongside strings.

Bouncing between beautiful, melodic pop and delightful insanity, Dark Days/Light Years is SFA’s best record since 2001’s Rings Around The World and is perfectly representative of a prolific body of work that makes them one of the most inventive and intriguing bands that Britain has ever produced.