The Super Furry Animals. Whether you love them or loathe them,
\nyou have at least heard of them. This bunch have been proving to
\nthe world for the better part of a decade that Tom Jones was an
\naccident, and that Welsh music has a lot to offer. Summer 2003 saw
\nthe release of their latest and greatest creation —
\nPhantom Power<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Upon release,
\nPhantom Power<\/i> was greeted with love and superlatives. We
\nwould expect nothing less of a band that brought to us such songs
\nas the fantastic “Juxtaposed Wit U” and the ever-memorable “The Man
\nDon’t Give A Fuck.” Indeed, we would expect nothing less of an
\nalbum that is their most coherent to date, whilst maintaining the
\nFurries’ tendencies to experiment with their attitude and
\ndelivery.<\/p>\n
\nPhantom Power<\/i> opens with “Hello Sunshine,” which, to be
\nhonest, is in the kind of mellow, swooning manner that the Furries
\nhave been tweaking and perfecting for years. Lead singer Gruff’s
\nvoice is as bittersweet as ever, draping deep, brown tones over a
\nbright and colourful musical backdrop. With “Hello Sunshine” still
\nfresh in our ears, the album moves on to “Liberty Belle.” As such,
\nthe track is typical of the album as a whole — the lyrics may play
\nwith anti-American imagery (“You know we’re diggin’ to hell \/
\nDrowning in our oil wells”) but the music remains defiantly upbeat,
\nserving to bring us a provoking and, most importantly, infectiously
\nlikeable song.<\/p>\n
As with albums from their ludicrously underrated back-catalogue,<\/p>\n
Phantom Power<\/i> jumps from style to style. This time, however,
\nwe the listener make the jump very comfortably with the Furries,
\nwhereas in the past we may have felt inclined to watch them jump
\nbut keep our feet firmly planted.
\nPhantom Power<\/i> retains a subtle coherency whilst covering
\napproaches ranging from post-punk (“Out Of Control”) to electronica
\n(“Slow Life”), from sing-along rock (fantastic first single “Golden
\nRetriever”) to melancholy anthems (“Bleed Forever”). Gruff
\ndemonstrates his mastery of a variety of singing styles, and his
\nlyrics dwell from anti-American (or anti-Bush) commentaries to
\npearls of wisdom from curious advisors (“Venus & Serena”).<\/p>\n
It’s no exaggeration to claim that the Super Furry Animals are
\nperhaps the most credible band around at the minute — they manage
\nto deliver profound and memorable music without falling into the
\ntrap of taking themselves too seriously, and their sound is both
\nrich and simple. Set-opener “Slow Life,” which features as the last
\ntrack on
\nPhantom Power<\/i>, is the sound of the band finding their feet
\nso perfectly: Indulging in a computer-generated intro and breaking
\ninto rock and orchestral arrangements respectively. The band on
\ntheir album have said that they finally found out how to intergrate
\ntechnology without alienating their own sound (a criticism often
\nlevelled at previous album
\nRings Around The World<\/i>), and, moreover, that they set out to
\ndraw a horse and eventually drew a horse, having drawn cows and
\nother such creatures in attempts of old.<\/p>\n
\nPhantom Power<\/i> is the kind of fresh-but-mature sound that
\ncould only be brought to you by a band that have been there and
\ncome back again in a musical sense. It is frankly a tremendous tour
\nde force of Super Furriness. If only all bands could achieve such a
\npinnacle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":26460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6902],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-37696","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-super-furry-animals","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37696"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}