The sound and the fury

It doesn’t seem so long ago that those Super Furry Animals were here to talk about their most dazzling hour, Rings Around The World. Indeed, when you consider that their debut album Fuzzy Logic was released in 1996 and now in the year 2003 they are on the eve of releasing their sixth record Phantom Power, it’s clear that they’ve been prolific to say the very least. And that’s not all. Add a b-sides and rarities compilation and one off singles like the classic ‘The Man Don’t Give a Fuck’ and the irresistible ‘Ice Hockey Hair’ and you’ve got a whopper of a back catalogue for a relatively young band.

“Our records sell well, but we’ve never had a huge commercially successful album so we’ve never had to tour the world really extensively for two years or whatever,” Gruff Rhys explains. “I’d like to think even if we had a big album we’ll still record. We write so much stuff we’d go nuts if we couldn’t record. Even as it is, Both Cian and me have huge backlogs of music. It’s said that Bob Marley didn’t write any songs in the seventies because he wrote so many in the sixties so he had enough to keep recording. We definitely have enough material for five or six albums and five or six good albums at that. Not fillers or crap from the vaults.”

SFA recently shared highlights from this epic repertoire of songs on a whistle stop tour calling at Cork and Limerick.

“When we play here we always get the most people singing outside Wales,” Gruff enthuses. “They know everything, even the most obscure stuff. Irish audiences are probably the most passionate around and if you ask any band they’re probably say the same thing. Dublin is great because usually we’ve found that when you’re playing the capital it’s full of hipsters being cool. Dublin is extremely different. It is also the nearest city to where I come from in terms of travelling. I can be here in two hours whereas Cardiff is four hours away.” Indeed, later, over a pint, Gruff in reminiscing about the good old days of booze cruises when a single fiver could buy you a day return from Holyhead to Dublin and they used to throw in a free bottle of whiskey for good, eh, measure.

Back home, the Furries have just staged a massive homecoming festival in their native North Wales in Bethesda as part of a year-long festival commemorating the breaking of the Great Penrhyn Quarry Strike. They also brought it all back home recently by choosing to premier their new single ‘Golden Retriever’ at the Millennium Stadium before Wales played Azerbaijan in the Euro qualifiers.

“We bought our own Astroturf and fake palm trains and cactus – sorry cacti,” Geoff grins. “We mimed a bit from the Theme From Grandstand with some trumpets. If you have to mime you must do it to your full potential because you can get away with doing anything!”

Tales of footie matches and playing gigs dressed as yetis are to be expected as business as usual in the SFA world. But given their penchant for recording some quite extreme music, Phantom Power is a relatively understated work.

“We chose the simpler songs rather than the crazier ones,” Gruff offers. “We had a list of 60 pieces on the wall, so we chose the 15 which we could play as a band whereas in the past we’d try and record all our ideas. That resulted in a lot of diverse albums, which are always interesting to make but it doesn’t necessarily make a coherent record. It is possibly the most whole thing we’ve ever done, which is generally what we were always trying to do. But we always left some space to fuck around. In the past, we were always desperately wanting to try out new production tricks and experiment with what we do and learn new instruments.

“Inevitably a record involving five people takes on a life of its own,” he continues. “We were more on it. We produced a lot of it ourselves, but we also worked with Tony Doogan who we met through Mogwai and who has recorded pretty much every band in Scotland. He is into what they call ‘method recording’ - building bonfire for us to sing around as a choir. You can hear the crackle on songs like ‘The Undefeated’. The bonfire may have been outside, but he did get quite extreme in the living room. He miked up the cars for some sound effects on ‘Valet Parking’. He is a man willing to take risks. After two weeks he convinced us to hire AK-47s for sound effects. It was a lot of fun.”

Are there any novel ideas about touring this album, like the special day events for Rings Around The World with screenings, bingo afternoons and DJ sets?

“We’ve a couple,” Gruff answers. “We like to keep it loose. I don’t want to go out and fart into a microphone in front of an audience who have paid twenty quid to get in, but I’d consider doing it in a pub in front of five people. I suppose we could make it easier for ourselves but it would kill what we do. We also could make a quick buck quite easily but there wouldn’t be any credibility left. We’re not in it to exploit people.”

So what, pray tell, are you in it for?

“You’d have to ask an anthropologist what makes grown men get together and perform to people in bars and theatres,” Gruff laughs. “We’re possessed by a Phantom Power. If you knew why you do it you’d be fucked. I know a lot of sensible people who are amazing guitarists and could probably make amazingly intelligent music but they’re too logical to be in a band. There is something very illogical about what we do.”