The Animals Have Taken Over The Zoo

IT WAS the sort of cunning plan that could only be hatched by someone like Mick The Weasel Quinn.
Whisk Gruff Rhys and Cian Ciaran away from the opulence of their five-star hotel, and take them to Dublin Zoo to meet some fellow Super Furry Animals.
Cornier than a Mr. Perri factory, I know, but guaranteed to produce some chucklesome images. Isn t that right, Gruff?
As long as you don t do what those bastards at Top Of The Pops magazine did.
What was that?
They superimposed my head onto a sheep s body, and had a bubble coming out of my mouth with maaaaa and baaaaaa in it. The caption was something like Here s Gruff speaking Welsh which was, well, really pathetic. My first thought was Let s go round and firebomb the bastards , but then I felt sorry for them because that s the extent of their imagination. They d say, Oh, it was just a bit of a laugh , but nobody would ve found it funny if they d done that to a black person or a Muslim. Actually, I wish they had done it to a Muslim because then there d be a fatwa out on them.
Misconception #1: Super Furry Animals are The Monkees with sing-song accents.
I m not saying they were right, but that type of thing makes you realise where the Free Wales Army were coming from.
The Free Wales what?
The Free Wales Army. They were like a really bad version of the IRA which existed for a while during the 60s. There s a famous story about the time they were on manoeuvres in the mountains. One of them chucked a grenade towards a lake and this Alsatian, which was their mascot, picked it up and started running back. They were running themselves in the opposite direction when boooom! , the dog exploded. It s all in a book I ve got called To Dream Of Freedom.
The only thing Gruff and Cian are dreaming about at the moment is a decent night s kip. There s still a week to go before their Guerrilla album hits the racks, but already Padre Pio-like powers of bi-location are needed to keep up with the promotional duties. Common sense says that they should ve been in bed early last night but, well, they wanted to hang around the Clarence bar in case Bono turned up.
Actually, it was because we wanted to get pissed, clarifies Cian Ciaran whose misery has been compounded by the Danes hockeying Wales in the European qualifiers. Now that we ve arrived in the Phoenix Park, the Furries techno boffin also has serious reservations about going into a cage-full of Lemurs.
Look, they re shitting everywhere, he says nervously stroking the #200 jacket he s just blagged off Admiral. Thankfully, he hasn t spotted the sign which warns that these mainly nocturnal forest dwellers are capable of producing a skunk-like whiff.
Finally a deal is struck: You go in too, and we ll do it.
Seconds later I m cursing Niall Stokes as an air-to-ground Lemur poo hits my Doc Marten.
That means they like you, Gruff laughs, oblivious to the fact that another of our furry friends has just done number twos down the back of his cagoule. Quite what the thought process is I don t know, but this puts him in mind of the time they nearly bought the farm in Iceland.
We were going back to Reykjavik, after seeing a glacier, when the mad promoter bloke who was driving us said, Let s go for an adventure. Maybe we die. Ha! ha! ha! Thinking he was joking we went ha! ha! ha! back, but the next thing we knew we were speeding up the side of this mountain at 80 miles an hour. That was sort of okay until the road turned into a blizzard and the car ground to a halt. It was -200 outside and the only supplies we had were two cans of lager and a packet of fish skin crisps.
The good thing about freezing to death in 10ft of snow is that you could be revived by a future civilisation, and make a killing on the retro circuit.
Like Ocean Colour Scene, you mean? No, I prefer people to be able to listen to our music and tell it was made in 1999.
Misconception #2: Super Furry Animals are proud members of the Britpop fraternity.
I don t like anything that associates itself with the Union Jack in that way, Gruff continues between bouts of heavy petting. I got majorly pissed off a couple of years ago when we were on the same festival bill in Belgium as the Sex Pistols, and they had all their gear draped in Union flags. They d argue that they were being ironic but, I dunno, it seemed really fascist.
Yeah, his colleague picks up, he tried mounting a one-man stage invasion but Steve Jones roadie stopped him. The whole thing of four middle-aged blokes going through the motions cos they need the money is incredibly sad. Seeing that, I m glad I wasn t a teenager in the 70s.
I m about to launch into a dissertation about situationism when a Lemur we ve nicknamed Liam don t ask decides to perch itself on the top of my head. A perfectly acceptable state of affairs, save for the fact that our cuddly chum has just downed three boiled-eggs, two Kiwi Fruit and a banana, and isn t toilet trained.
Anyway, let s talk about this album of theirs. The reviews so far have likened Guerrilla to The Fall, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Van Dyke Parkes, The Beatles and, most mysteriously of all, Roxy Music.
Yeah, their first album, apparently, Gruff resumes. A lot of claims have been made on our behalf, but really what we do is pretty straightforward. We re not druids, or quasi-mystics, or mad hippies who roam the hills grazing on magic mushrooms. We re five blokes who smoke a bit of ganja and make music.
Misconception #3: The economies of Peru, Bolivia and Colombia would instantly collapse if the Super Furries gave up drugs.
The only stand we ve ever taken is against formulaic guitar rock. Y know, bands making music based on what The Pixies were doing 10 years ago. Or, worse still, what The Beatles were doing 30 years ago.
Where does Gruff stand on the Gay Dad issue?
That last single of theirs was a complete regurgitation. Standard words sung over standard riffs with a standard image. There s a British rock tradition that they re either unwilling or unable to deviate from. What we do is make music that s personal to us. It mightn t be any good, but it hasn t been done eight-hundred-and-ninety-five million times before.
Are there any skinny white-boy rock n roll outfits that have taken his fancy recently?
Pavement and Bjvrk are the exception to the rule in that they don t sound like anyone else, and have interesting lyrics. The clichid stuff s crap, but language-wise good hip hop is far better than rock. They actually think about what they say.
Which, if one is to indulge in a spot of lateral journalism means that Super Furry Animals wouldn t listen in a fit to 95% of their Creation labelmates.
It s good that Oasis selling millions of records subsidises artists like Trashmonk who aren t so mainstream, he says diplomatically. It s a very unpretentious label, and unusual in that it s staffed by music fans. The reasons we signed to them are, one, they re prepared to take chances and, two, they don t immediately expect you to go top 20.
You have to admire a label that not only sanctioned the release of The Man Don t Give A Fuck as a Christmas single, but managed to get it onto breakfast TV. Talking of TMDGAF , the Furries have taken to ending their gigs with a technofied version of the song which matches My Bloody Valentine in the sonic assault stakes.
The original idea was for it to keep going until the very last person had left the hall, but obviously that wasn t practical, Ciaran confides. It was bad enough in a big venue, but when we played a club with the same P.A. it was so loud that somebody sprayed the mixing-desk with a fire extinguisher. Everyone down the back had to leave cos they couldn t breathe.
In Wolverhampton, we wandered up to the balcony and watched the last 10 minutes of our own gig.
What was his unbiased opinion?
I quite liked us.
Maybe it s the damage that s being done to his cagoule, but Gruff chooses this moment to announce that he s all Lemur-ed out and can we go and see the lions can we? can we?
Not wanting any temper tantrums or exorbitant dry-cleaning bills we arrive at their enclosure in time to see 16-year-old Matt pluck a blackbird out of the air and swallow it whole. For desert, he nonchalantly walks over to his mate, Kate, and indulges in a leonine version of a quickie. Sated, he turns over and falls asleep.
It s not very New Lion of him, is it?, Gruff tut tuts.
It says here, Cian volunteers, that lions sleep for up to 20 hours a day, have sex 30 times in the other four, and exist on a diet of wildebeest, impala, antelope, giraffe, wild hog and zebra. What a great life!
How does it compare to being in a top pop combo?
The extra sleep and sex I could handle, but being stuck in a cage would drive me insane, Gruff reveals. The best part for me is travelling to places like Japan where they have a totally different take on your music. They re great at coming up with these other explanations for songs which, although a million miles from what you intended, make perfect sense: You know your song, Radiator ? Well, Radiator, the bear, is like a Shinto god that sets tests of good vs. evil. If you pass, you will be rewarded. If you fail, you will be punished. That s how you should do your reviews in Hot Press.
Mmm. Well, I ll certainly suggest it to the editor.
We had a group of Japanese girls following us around on our last UK tour, he continues. They flew in from Tokyo, and then got the train down to Tenby where we were rehearsing. They went to all the gigs and then spent three days in Cardiff because they wanted to sample Welsh life. These weren t rich kids they d worked hard and saved their money.
Along with Japan, the Super Furries favourite ports of call are Wales, Scotland and break out the champagne Ireland. Do I detect a bit of a Celtic bias?
Celtic? Cian muses. No, it s more the fact that audiences here aren t afraid to go mental. The coolest people are the ones who aren t trying to be cool.
I used to listen to Irish radio when I was growing up because our news was censored, Gruff imparts. RTE s lead would be radioactive waste leaking into the atmosphere at Sellafield. Tune into BBC Wales, no story. There s loads of other stuff that s been hushed up like a third-cousin of mine being jailed for 32 months on trumped-up conspiracy charges. Him and his friend were able to prove that MI5 had broken into their houses and left maps and bomb-making equipment, but it hardly got any coverage.
Although reckoning it to be a step in the right direction, SFA joined the Manics in boycotting the recent Welsh Assembly gig in Cardiff.
Doing it would ve been the same as going, Everything s okay now , which it isn t. Musically, as well, it would ve been shit because we d only have got to play one song sandwiched in between Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey. It s not us.
More them is Glastonbury which, if the Shinto gods are appeased, should see Super Furry Animals clinching their promotion to the Premiership. If giving it loads in front of 90,000 profoundly stoned people doesn t do it, their new single, Fire In My Heart , definitely will. A tale of almost unbearable lust, it s Oasis Wonderwall , The Verve s Sonet and something I can t quite remember by Captain Beefheart, all rolled into one.
I never finished that story about being stuck on the mountain, did I?, says Gruff, quantum-leaping back an hour. Well, we didn t die.
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