They'd probably baulk at the idea of being described as 'veterans', but Welsh wizards SUPER FURRY ANIMALS have been around for a good 15 years or so now. They've already supplied us with a bounteous Greatest Hits collection and suffered the slings and arrows of major labeldom and now seem happy to settle down – if not exactly age gracefully - with Rough Trade.
And, while they'll probably never quite attain the status of their Creation heyday, they're still out there, still gnawing away the boundaries and doing whatever the devil they please. Usually with nonchalently brilliant results. The bastards.
'Dark Days/ Light Years', though, might not initially sit as easily as much of their output. SFA themselves freely admit many of the tunes are based more on riffs and grooves and that they deliberately binned the acoustic melancholy they excel at this time around. So if you're expecting a clutch of new 'Fire In My Heart”s, then you could conceivably come away feeling a little short-changed. Disappointed, even.
This being SFA, though, expectations should be of the unexpected variety. After all, it's because you never quite know what you're going to get with Gruff and co that they keep you on their toes. And yes, it's also true that some of 'Dark Days/ Light Years' chooses an especially steep and obstacle-stewn path to your heart. Opener 'Crazy, Naked Girls', for example, takes in motorik Krautock rhythms, blippy drum'n'bass and heavy, Glam-my rifferama before its' wound down and the bizarre 'Inaugural Trams' pits pumping electro-pop with an, erm, spoken word part by Franz Ferdinand guitarist Nick McCarthy. In German. Think OMD circa 'Dazzle Ships' being fronted by Robyn Hitchcock and you're, well, vaguely close.
Talking of electro-pop, both 'Inconvenience' and 'Cardiff Sunshine' take this as their cue, though they wander off in very different directions. Despite a mad, heavy metal-style ending, 'Inconvience' finds SFA'S natural pop sensibility struggling inside its' cocoon. 'Cardiff Sunshine', meanwhile, tries on screes of feedback and a sinewy, Can-style logic before some lush, Beach Boys harmonies kick in and the clouds are banished. It takes a little time to come to terms with, as does 'Moped Eyes' which resembles...well, maybe not quite Prince, but certainly SFA in bump'n'grind mode, egged on by a phonky mutha of a bassline from Guto Pryce.
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So far, so confusing, then, though the band's natural melodicism finally begins to struggle free from around the album's mid-point. A lesser group could never get away with a title like 'The Very Best of Neil Diamond', never mind set it to a sitar and counterpoint guitar riff and come up smelling gloriously of roses, but SFA do it with ease. 'White Socks/ Flip Flops' gives Bunf a chance to give his guitar a good Keef-ing at last and 'Where Do You Wanna Go?' - at track ten – sounds like SFA finally wanting to stuff us silly with killer singles after all.
That doesn't quite happen, mind. 'Lliwiau Llachar' (sorry, me neither) is the token Welsh language tune, though it still sounds poppy as hell and the closing 'Pric' (sic) is driven on by another insistent bassline, out-there keyboards from Cian Ciaran and morphs and throbs its' way into a full-on Krautrock symphony to finish. Well, we were talking grooves, weren't we?
'Dark Days/ Light Years', then, may be something of a sleeper within the SFA canon. It relishes the chicanes and left-field lumps, even though it does boast some svelte grooves and can never totally disguise the band's penchant for tuneful brilliance, however mischievous they may have been feeling when these songs went down. It may not be a career best, but if most bands were allowed to display this much verve, spirit and diversity after fifteen years in the fray we'd have a much healthier industry altogether.
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