New SFA Record in March/April!!!!!

[If you shout...]

SOY SUPER BIEN SOY SUPER SUPER BIEN SOY BIEN BIEN SUPER BIEN BIEN BIEN SUPER SUPER!!!!!!!!!!

For more details, go here!

Super Furry Animals

This is me, right now:

WA#VYTW# 86y23t wa3ty'8w48uyt8$PW#YUSZ($#YP(43wut8o;sy'4wgS$WSI T*W#TY ?ZESILGZU#WUTI weTEZWSTjewzztZ*3 ty3qt#Tw3 t w4y7s4eu55ezu474x fjxk5hgLVH
:'oi46[UIgjipl6kgyj84cfrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr><<RrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrRRrRrrrrrrrrRRrr rrr R rR

AKA FUCKED JAZZED THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[lazarus]

I posted this in Random Music Talk.

I guess it did deserve its own thread, huh?


YES!!!!!

 

[LemonMelon]

Please tour out here, guys.

 

[If you shout...]

Yes. Please please please please please. Please.

Please.

 

[If you shout...]

Track descriptions from the band:

01 'The Very Best of Neil Diamond'
"It's about all these houses being destroyed by jets etc. Someone put a Neil Diamond tape on before hand, and you can still hear it playing through the rubble."
02 White Socks/Flip Flops
"It's a song by Bunf [Huw Bunford, guitarist] concerning the type of footwear one needs to write a good novel."
03 Inaugural Trams
"A celebratory anthem regarding the opening of a new tram line in a fictitious utopian mainland Europe town. Featuring a rap in German by a special guest."
04 Sounds Familiar
"It does. But not in the way you think!"
05 Cardiff in the Sun
"Doesn't happen often, would probably sound like this."
06 Where Do You Wanna Go?
07 LLiwiau LLachar
"These are twin songs. If they were cities they would probably be Minneapolis and St. Paul. Lliwiau Llachar means Intensely Bright Colours. With all the synth arpeggios and Daf going nuts on drums it's like the Who or something, would be great theme music for 'CSI Cardiff'."
08 Mountain
"A euphoric glam rock stomp by Cian [Ciaran, keyboardist] that sounds as big as the title, and concerns people turning molehills into extreme sport venues."
09 Moped Eyes
"We've been playing this song live for a couple of years, it's been called 'Hot Clubs' and 'Hot Nuts' in the past. You can see a crude early version on YouTube."
10 Inconvenience
"We've been playing around with this heavy guitar riff for a few years now. It's so heavy it features both Guto [Pryce, bassist] and Bunf on two duelling bass guitars."
11 Crazy Naked Girls
"Bunf wrote this tribute to a Cardiff bar he used to drink in before re-development. It's now a block of unsold 'luxury' flats. It's a song in three parts."
12 Earth
"Anyone who attended a SFA gig on the Hey Venus! tour would know this song. It features very distinct audience participation. You can see numerous versions of it performed from Tokyo to California and beyond on YouTube ."
13 Prick
"This song is built on Cian's Moog groove and builds and builds into a great big house or castle of noise."

 

[lazarus]

This sounds fucking amazing.

Glad they're getting weird again!

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

02 White Socks

11 Crazy Naked Girls

I very much like these two song titles.

 

[If you shout...]

I cannot believe that "Hot Nuts" is going to be on a record. Unbelievable. Have you ever heard the early versions of that thing? Absurdities, all. I'm very, very, very curious about this one. Cannot fucking wait.

 

[If you shout...]

I also cannot believe or accept how few comments are in here. Or how many views the thread has caught. I mean, this is the best pop band of the last 20 years. Where is the love/excitement/super bien-ness?

Get crazy, people. Ice hockey hair is about to make a comeback, up in this bitch.

 

[LemonMelon]

I also cannot believe or accept how few comments are in here. Or how many views the thread has caught. I mean, this is the best pop band of the last 20 years. Where is the love/excitement/super bien-ness?

Get crazy, people. Ice hockey hair is about to make a comeback, up in this bitch.

I'm no more pleased about it than you are. This is a fucking great band.

 

[LJT]

I haven't posted here as of yet, because I find I am inadequate at expressing the love I feel for this band.

 

[onebloodonelife]

I already posted my hoorays in the Random Music thread, but I'm excited to see what they've done.

 

[If you shout...]

I find I am inadequate at expressing the love I feel for this band.

I understand this affliction all too well...

 

[No spoken words]

If one were to give this band a listen, where would one recommend the other one start?

 

[LJT]

Radiator and Guerrilla were the first two I got, excellent albums....they have a pretty good best of though Songbook if you want to use that as a starting point, something like 21 tracks on it, all their singles.

 

[lazarus]

Personally I would start with Rings Around the World, because it's got a bit of everything (including Paul McCartney chewing vegetables for percussion). Also comes with a bonus EP of 6 more songs if you get the right edition (it wasn't very limited).

It's also in my opinion one of the Top 5 albums of the decade.

Actually, the most recent, Hey Venus, wouldn't be a bad entry point either.

 

[LemonMelon]

If one were to give this band a listen, where would one recommend the other one start?

Album: Radiator, Rings Around The World

Compilation: The Songbook

 

[If you shout...]

Yes, start either with Songbook, the singles comp. of the best singles band of this generation, or Rings Around the World--at once their best, most complete, and most representative album. All you're missing, on there, is a Welsh track. Otherwise, literally every single style of music with which the band has ever flirted (and they've done basically everything that can be done in pop music with largely 4/4 time signatures) is represented, on Rings. Laz understands. Not just a best of the decade contender, but probably one of the best 50 records I've ever heard. And that's a brutally conservative placement.

If you want to try individual songs, try out "God! Show Me Magic!," "Herman Luvs Pauline," "Night Vision," "Ysbeidiau Heulog," "Receptacle for the Respectable," "Slow Life," "Lazer Beam," and "Into the Night." You'll get a pretty good taste, there, with one song from each album.

Also, "Ice Hockey Hair" is the definitive Furries song, bowing out with the most impossibly perfect and spot-on coda in contemporary music:

"Now that you're here, tell me you're a non-believer."

 

[lazarus]

For some reason I thought Guerilla was your favorite IYS. Nice to know we're in agreement.

Songbook does have Ice Hockey Hair, though. Agreed again, one of the best recordings I've ever heard.

 

[lazarus]

"Now that you're here, tell me you're a non-believer."

Funny that you mention that line. I always find it odd when I think about how much I like such a religious band like U2 and such a militant agnostic/atheistic band like SFA.

Run, Christian, Run FTW.

 

[No spoken words]

Thanks for the advice, all.

 

[If you shout...]

Funny that you mention that line. I always find it odd when I think about how much I like such a religious band like U2 and such a militant agnostic/atheistic band like SFA.

The reason that I like the line so very, very, very much is because of its double-meaning. As you very accurately put it, the band is militant (to say the least...if you've seen the video for "Run! Christian, Run!," then maybe "combative" or "brutal" are better words) in its atheism. This lends the line one of its readings.

At the same time, though, I love the fact that the coda (in the context of what the band felt, at the time, to be its best song; it lived a long life much like Beck's "Debra," being played for a while, at shows, and only being known as "That One Song That They Always Play Live" or "Family Band") is like a call-to-arms or a dare.

"This is us, this is our music, and we challenge you not to love it." It works the same way as the chorus in "Rings Around the World"--it fits both within the song's narrative and within the band's narrative. I absolutely love that shit, because when you're wrapped up in the song, you really just can't help but believe in them and their power to drench the world in sunshine. Just like how, when they're at their best, they draw rings right the hell around the motherfucking world.

 

[lazarus]

Very well said, IYS. I haven't seen these guys live since Love Kraft, and I can't wait to have that communal experience again. You failed to mention how absolutely phenomenal they are in concert.

The Man Don't Give A Fuck live FTW.

Would you believe I had never heard of them until I saw them open for Pavement on their final tour? Instant convert.

 

[Dalton]

Am I the only one that thinks that he should start with Love Kraft?

BTW - I don't understand militant (or even overly vocal) atheists. I can understand shout it from the rooftops religious people. They believe they have the one true path to enlightenment if not eternal salvation. That's something to get excited about.

Atheists? "Hey ya'll! We're all alone up in this bitch and life has no meaning and there is no hope." WTF?

 

[lazarus]

Well IYS isn't going to agree with you because he thinks LK and Phantom Power are both weak. Personally I think they're both lush, pop brilliance. I would say to NSW that if he's really into Brian Wilson-esque arrangements and stuff like that, try LK.

As for the militant atheists or agnostics, many of us are sick of religion having such a huge influence in the secular world, specifically the government.

 

[Dalton]

And I would say who cares, you're fucked one way or the other.

 

[If you shout...]

Wonderful video: YouTube - Super Furry Animals -The Man Don't Give A Fuck-

Regarding Phantom Power and Love Kraft: Laz is right to note that I think these are the band's two weakest efforts. I think that Phantom Power, though, is a good album--a few spectacular songs, and nothing "bad." The politics get a bit muddled and, at times, silly, but the songs are between good and transcendent. I think that Love Kraft, though, is a genuinely poor record. I love two or three songs, and actively dislike the others. If it weren't a Super Furry Album, I wouldn't even have left it on my HD, after giving it a listen.

Regarding strident atheism: The arguments laid out by the band in the "Run! Christian, Run!" video are the same which I would and often do make--millions and millions of people, as recently as today, have been and still are being murdered, killed, executed, tortured to death, etc. in the name of one god or another. Renouncing religion wouldn't end all the world's ills, but it would get rid of all of the ills caused or motivated by religion.

The band is not, though, stridently pro-defeatism. It doesn't sound to me like you understand what atheism means, Dalton--it simply means that you're not theistic. They don't run around saying, "Nihilism or bust! Support it! No atheist ever killed anybody or did anything wrong!" Rather, they feel that far more bad than good has come of Christianity/organized religion, and that we should therefore move away from it and embrace...well, embracing stuff, rather than damning stuff. I think that anti-religion is probably the best way to classify them. I've never seen, heard, or read the band say anything bad about Christians or other religious people (nor, for that matter, anything good about atheists), but rather about those things which have historically and continuously and endlessly and undeniably happened, as a result of people carrying out what were believed to be religion-mandated actions.

The video makes specific references to the Salem "witch" trials, the Crusades, and dozens of other misguided mass murders in the name of a higher power. Pretty much the greatest hits. You've taken a world history class, in high school? You know where they're getting their ammunition.

 

[Dalton]

I don't think anyone is going to confuse me with a religious person (especially on this board), but this particular argument against religion seems weak to me. If this is our standard by which we judge community institutions than both government, family, and community living in general would all be thrown to the wayside.

In my opinion the sins of religion (any of them) are no more egregious than that of any other aspect of human institutions.

 

[Dalton]

I don't think anyone is going to confuse me with a religious person (especially on this board), but this particular argument against religion seems weak to me. If this is our standard by which we judge community institutions than both government, family, and community living in general would all be thrown to the wayside.

In my opinion the sins of religion (any of them) are no more egregious than that of any other aspect of human institutions.

 

[If you shout...]

If this is our standard by which we judge community institutions than both government, family, and community living in general would all be thrown to the wayside.

Hey, sorry about what I think was kind of a needlessly brusque reply, up there, Dalton. Something with Interference was and is screwy, and my post went up before I read it...and now I'm not being allowed to edit it. I'm just sorry if I sounded like a douchebag. Whether or not you agree with me, I still think that I did.

Ironically, though (and this is what I mean by muddled politics, which didn't just suddenly crop up in Phantom Power, but rather got harder to overlook), there is a soundbite and a bit of scrolling text which always plays during "The Man Don't Give a Fuck." It says...

All Governments Are Liars and Murderers

So, it seems that they agree with you!