Super Furry Animals

“Hello. We’re Super Furry Animals,” Gruff Rhys intones in a Welsh accent as thick as congealed custard. “We’ve got six albums and we’re going to play songs from all of them.” Woo hoo! No need for patiently sitting through a set of newies just to hear one or two old classics. These are the hits, delivered in inimitable SFA style.

Hence, we get a good hearty chunk of goodies from albums like Radiator and Mwng such as ‘Demons’, ‘Mountain People’ and the irresistible ‘Hermann Loves Pauline’. That stupid line, “Marie Curie was Polish born but French bred. Ha! French bread!” still makes me grin after all these years. The Furries tread carefully with new material, merely opting for ‘Hello Sunshine’, ‘Out of Control’, ‘Sex, War And Robots’ and ‘Bleed Forever’, dousing the gentler gems with some sweet as honey pedal steel.

But it’s not all mellow gold. Gruff periodically dons a weird space helmet for no discernible reason whatsoever. The infamous Paul McCartney chomping celery classic ‘Receptacle For The Respectable’ sees Gruff scoff a pack of Tayto – a nice homage to proper Irish crisps in these dark days of a tasteless Walkers invasion.

The coup de grace was a spectacular rendition of ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’ that seemed to degenerate into an even more chaotic techno climax than usual. As the searing beats began to soothe, they took to the stage again and we braced ourselves for an encore. But instead, they lashed straight into a noisy reprise. A class end to a class night.