Live Report: Super Furry Animals at 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin

THE Super Furry Animals playing live again after a ten-year absence? So which band will show up: the cosmic, interstellar musical travellers, ready to regenerate past glories and strap us in for a new sonic journey; the eternal underachievers, too stoned and psychedelic for the Britpop crowd, then too Britpop (or too baked?) to fully capitalise the new-psychedelia rush of the late Nineties/early Noughties; or the world-conquering pop group we always wanted them to be, but never quite became?

The Super Furries have always walked a strange line between brilliance and, erm, something less so: hedonistic, certainly, but the Welsh mavericks’ fatal flaw was never that that their tendency towards flakiness and madness led towards the inconsistency that scuppered many a good drug-fuelled group; rather, when they underachieve, it tends to get downright boring.

In the first act of their comeback show, the same problem seems to be re-emerging. Why on earth would a band loved for their colourful nature take to the stage in uniform black, with minimal interaction, their most animated gestures appearing to be requests for the stage crew to hike the sound up?

For the opener, frontman Gruff Rhys clutches an inflatable phone as the pulsing electronics of 'Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)' pump out, but with the stage drenched in dark and the band stock-still, the visual gag is barely noticeable and just not hitting home. It falls flat, and the rest of the opening run follows a similar trend; the old classics treated as returning heroes by an audience clearly psyched for this reunion, but the wild reaction dulled by a crushing listlessness from the stage.

As always with the Super Furries, it's not a deliberate self-sabotage; the set is as hit-stacked and crowd-pleasing as you could want - 'Golden Retriever', 'Something For The Weekend', 'If You Don't Want Me Destroy You' all popping up early doors, a flood of gems that less experienced bands would kill for - but the delivery is peculiarly aloof. Gruff remains a somewhat enigmatic figure; proof that quirkiness and eccentricity don't always translate into real charisma.

'Ice Hockey Hair' is arguably the band's career's high watermark, but is delivered here with a surliness that kills any rousing or anthemic qualities that might have lifted the mood. A slow start, so can the night be salvaged?

The answer is, perhaps surprisingly, an emphatic YES.

'Hello Sunshine', a relatively languid entry in the Furries' inconsistent but formidable songbook, proves an unlikely turning point: the visuals, morphing from the drab black-and-white hues of the gig's opening act to a sudden warm haze of colour, injecting a new life into proceedings, and atoning for an undeniable charisma deficit from the stage (and perhaps raising the question: why couldn't they just have had bright and colourful visuals from minute one?).

But quibbles aside, once the Furries click, they really are Super, and audience and band are now well and truly locked in: the warm brass and irresistible melodicism of 'Northern Lites'; the sublime, country-tinged 'Run! Christian, Run!'; the almost campfire-style singalong to 'Fire In My Heart', among the highlights.

They still occasionally don't quite wring enough energy from their classics as they perhaps could - 'Play It Cool' and 'Juxtaposed With U', while undeniably gorgeous, don't quite kick in the way they could - but the warm narcotic glow has now fully entranced the audience too much for anyone to care.

The Furries' tendency to be enigmatic and chameleonic, yet trapped in an old, familiar, yet comforting loop of near-greatness, is epitomised by the closer 'The Man Don't Give a Fuck': the classic song's irresistible quiet-loud dynamics giving way to a pulsing electronic reshaping of the track, as the majority of the band troop off stage, in the exact same fashion as when some of us (cough cough) last saw the Furries play live, back in 1999. Though the climax where they flood back onto the stage to segue back into the rockin' version of the song, while wearing preposterous wigs, didn't happen in the show 27 years ago, and is a welcome, eh, new addition.

Super Furry Animals at 3Olympia 06/04/2026. Copyright Zoltán Szabó / hotpress.com

So what exactly have the Furries given us by reuniting? More reasons to love them, but also more reasons to find them utterly exasperating. But isn't that why we love them?