Phantom Power

It’s album numero six for everybody’s favourite Welsh Wizards, which places them on a similar playing pitch to long term stalwarts like Blur and Radiohead. Ever since I first heard Super Furry Animals’ weird and wonderful ‘Hometown Unicorn’ from their Fuzzy Logic debut during the hot summer of ‘96 in Munich, they’ve never let me down. Various live encounters over the years from Whelan’s to Witnness have been equally impressive and exciting.

But, coming to the sixth installment, SFA do have a very hard act to follow. The DVD-accompanied 2001 album Rings Around The World was perhaps their finest record yet, scoring highly in just about every end of year poll. It was, in the words of one publication who voted it the album of the year, “a What’s Goin’ On for the text messaging generation.” Rings was packed to the sonic gills with inventiveness, humour, political awareness and protest and of course, Sir Macca himself chewing celery. By contrast, even though Phantom Power also comes with a DVD (which was not available at the time of writing) it is a far more subtle and nuanced album – but then again, pretty much anything in the wake of that hour of unadulterated sheer madness and genius was bound to be.

Be warned SFA aficionados, Phantom Power is a great album, but it requires quite a lengthy gestation period. Initially, I was rather underwhelmed and more than just a little bit disappointed. Where were the Furry classics like ‘Demons’, ‘God Show Me Magic’, ‘Fire In My Heart’ and ‘Juxtaposed With U’? But in addition to being the mellowest and most understated SFA release to date, it is also the most personal and honest.

Many of these gorgeous songs, which are steeped in mournful pedal steel (especially the thematically representative ‘Sex, War and Robots’) and couched in intricate arrangements, deal directly with broken relationships and war. Phantom Power puts to music that queasy, panic stricken realisation that true love must always reach some kind of conclusion.

And if that wasn’t enough, the bigger picture shows that our world’s most powerful nations have no qualms whatsoever about steamrollering over universal democratic will and diplomacy. We can march as much as we want to, but to them, it’s just a walk in Hyde Park. It’s not just your boy/girl-friend that can let you down; such concerns of the broken hearted are the very least of our 21st century worries.

But it’s not all kleenex and ‘Not in Our Name’ placards. Tracks such as ‘Hello Sunshine’, ostensibly about the compulsion to escape from misery and depression, contain silly pop nuggets like, “I’m a minger/You’re a minger too/So c’mon minger/I want to ming with you.” ‘Golden Retriever’, a slow burner of a first single if ever there was one, is choc a bloc with a customary SFA surreality, populated by dogs, puppies and devils at roundabouts.

There are, however, some dark under and over tones to these Animal creations. ‘Liberty Belle’ is a cartoon character who is all conquering and fearless, not unlike a certain nation state that has formed a dangerous habit of blanking the United Nations. ‘Bleed Forever’ is about the proliferation of nuclear power stations in the band’s native North Wales, an issue equally pertinent to Irish fans as these potential killers are located just 99 kilometres across the pond. ‘Out of Control’ is this album’s real rock out moment – a howling pop avalanche that again takes a wry and worried look at the state we’re in.

If you have a fairly casual interest in the Furries, then Phantom Power is perhaps not the SFA album you must have in your collection, as Rings Around The World and Guerilla present much poppier listening pleasures. But if you are among the ever-growing legion of committed Furry devotees, then a riveting and thought-provoking summer of discontent is about to begin.