Last year, they graced the Electric Picnic stage wearing shiny Power Rangers outfits. In the past, they have worn Yeti costumes and have been flanked onstage by ten foot cardboard horses, smoking volcanoes and curiously phallic installations (honest).
Where to next in the warped world of the Welsh psychedelic wizards? To Spinal Tap territory, that’s where.
Against a soundtrack of harmless 80’s aerobic disco (which segues - somehow - into an A-Team/Rocky type anthemic roar) footage of the Furries loading up on a golf cart and making their way through the venue’s backstage area is beamed into the venue. With that, the quintet appears onstage on their trusty buggy, adorned with suits shimmering with squillions of tiny fibre-optic threads (as sported during their triumphant Oxegen set).
Typically, this type of hyper-visual tomfoolery is often favoured by artists who are attempting to flavour their mediocrity with bombastic spectacle...the musical equivalent, if you will, of blinding people with science. In the case of the Super Furry Animals however, their playful attitude to showmanship merely serves to highlight their sense of adventure and experimentation.
As expected, gems from their latest opus Love Kraft nestle perfectly between time-honoured crowd-pleasers. Songs like the pristine ‘Zoom!’ and ‘Atomic Lust’ positively zing and crackle, while ‘The Horn’ and ‘Lazer Beam’ are sheathed in a glorious technicolour light. Similarly, ‘Do Or Die’ and ‘Rings Around The World’, both boasting an exquisitely beefy texture, are a rush of blood to the senses.
For all the wacky bells and whistles tacked on to the SFA live experience, tonight is also a night of overwhelming melancholia; in fact, they ladle it on with a spoon during ‘Fire In My Heart’ and ‘Hello Sunshine’. In short, it’s as blunt and profound a statement of happy-sad wonderment as the band are capable of giving (given the fibre-optic suit and all).
“We played a gig in the Isle of Man last night,” explains frontman Gruff Rhys before departing the stage. “We cracked it...if you see a satellite of the Isle we have split it straight in two.” You’d do well to believe him.
Pic: Andrew Duffy