New Release by “Super Furry Animals”

Super Furry Animals
Dark Days/Light Years
Rough Trade Records, 2009

To cut to the chase, Dark Days/Light Years is a very good album that nev­er­the­less seems to betray the 16-year his­tory of this Welsh bizarro-pop band.  For this rea­son, it may become a con­tro­ver­sial offer­ing in the band’s cat­a­logue, but for the very same rea­son, it may also stand out as a high-water mark.

Throughout their career, Super Furry Animals have charted a course that seems intent on per­fectly syn­the­siz­ing pop sen­si­bil­ity with ear-bending weird­ness.  This for­mula cul­mi­nated in the 2001 album, Rings Around the World, as well as in its imme­di­ate follow-up, Phantom Power, in 2003.  Both of these albums fea­tured a wealth of melody and hooks, but with enough excur­sions into chaos, psy­che­delia and down­right sub­ver­sion to perk up ears of even the most jaded audio­philes.  After this era, the group had its Burt Bacharach moment, releas­ing Love Kraft in 2005, which coated a major­ity of its songs in lush string arrange­ments and kept the exper­i­men­ta­tion to a muf­fled roar.  Perhaps as a nat­ural con­se­quence, the fol­low­ing album, Hey Venus!, was stripped down, fea­tur­ing dom­i­nant hooks, aggres­sive elec­tric gui­tars (at least by SFA’s stan­dards), and far less of the lush­ness of pre­vi­ous albums.

One could expect that a hold­ing pat­tern of increased orna­men­ta­tion fol­lowed by “back to basics” efforts could eas­ily flesh out the remain­der of the band’s career, which is why Dark Days/Light Years is a bit of a head-scratcher.  For this release, the band has decided to do away with tra­di­tional song struc­ture, instead opt­ing for groove-based songs, often con­sist­ing of only one or two chords.  The music is made even more aero­dy­namic with insis­tent and unchang­ing bass lines and other sonic ele­ments that con­tinue through­out entire songs.  On a more global scale, almost every song segues neatly into the next, so the entire work can be viewed as one, lengthy multi-part song.  It is from this per­spec­tive that the album begins to make sense, and where it essen­tially becomes a DJ mix con­sist­ing entirely of orig­i­nal material.

After a few lis­tens, it becomes evi­dent that, despite a lack of catchy song struc­tures, the melodies make the most of their min­i­mal­ist sur­round­ings, cre­at­ing dis­tinct and ulti­mately mem­o­rable verses and cho­ruses.  In addi­tion, the music is densely and metic­u­lously lay­ered; some­thing is always chang­ing or evolv­ing.  This is music that can fade to the back­ground while never fad­ing out of consciousness.

Dark Days/Light Years begins with “Crazy Naked Girls,” which after a minute or so of false starts, ram­shackle beats, and falsetto vocals, roars to life with a full frontal stoner-rock riff that con­tin­ues in var­i­ous per­mu­ta­tions for the rest of the track.  With this song, SFA not only flex their sonic chops, but appear to be hav­ing more fun than they have had since 1999’s odd­ball Guerilla.  Also of note in the first half of the record is “Inaugural Trams,” in which the band beams opti­mistic on the sub­ject of gleam­ing new pub­lic trans­porta­tion while a slyly infec­tious krautrock beat bounces along.

However, it is the sec­ond half of the album in which SFA earn their keep.  After the candy-coated “Helium Hearts,” which stands as the album track clos­est to con­ven­tional song­writ­ing, a per­sis­tent rhythm gui­tar announces “White Socks/Flip-Flops” with so much con­fi­dence that within sec­onds, there is no doubt for the lis­tener — this is the record’s strongest track.  This song encap­su­lates the best of this album: a hyp­notic groove becomes the can­vas for manic lay­er­ing of tex­tures and sub­tle shift­ing of chord tones, result­ing in a cathar­tic com­bi­na­tion of men­ace and imp­ish glee.  The album closes with the lengthy “Pric,” in which a stri­dent pulse dri­ves itself to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion before dis­si­pat­ing into sev­eral min­utes of murky noise.

Dark Days/Light Years either marks a turn­ing point for Super Furry Animals, or it marks a nec­es­sary detour into exper­i­men­ta­tion; it is too early to tell.  Whatever the case, even long-time fans can for­give these Welshmen for retreat­ing from their usual Beatlesque hooks if it means the result is nearly sixty min­utes of head-bobbing stereo­phonic bliss.

http://www.superfurry.com/

Ryan Harrell. HighStreet. Cleveland