Super Furry Animals
Songbook: The Singles, Vol. 1
(XL)
Let’s give it up for Wales.
As if Dylan Thomas, Bertrand Russell, and John Cale weren’t
enough, the vowel-challenged British principality has seen fit to
favor us with the Super Furry Animals, a maverick rock quintet
that’s been making brilliantly silly, unexpectedly moving
records since 1995. Although they’ve never achieved the
critical or commercial success of fellow laptop-lovers Radiohead,
the Super Furry Animals have made their mark in other ways: They
bought a soccer team, recorded Paul McCartney eating celery, and,
in 2000, were responsible for the only Welsh-language album ever to
hit No. 11 on the British charts. More important, they’ve
created an eclectic but consistently great body of work that
combines cutting-edge experimentation, unabashed pop sensibilities,
and absurdist humor. Imagine the Flaming Lips with better vocals
(but equally silly costumes), or a less gloom-and-doom Radiohead,
or the Beach Boys mashed up with Aphex Twin. Such comparisons
don’t begin to describe the delirious pleasures proffered by
the Super Furry Animals.
Songbook
chronicles SFA’s decade-long career by cramming all 21 of the
group’s U.K. singles on one disc. Hardcore fans might be
disappointed by the absence of previously unreleased material, but
they shouldn’t get too bent out of shape: The band has
already recorded its next studio album, which is slated to appear
in May. Besides, retrospectives such as this one are designed to
entice new listeners, not to satisfy completists, and it’s
hard to imagine that Songbook won’t succeed in this regard. After
listening to it nonstop for a few months, neophytes will surely
snag the original releases.
Picking out highlights from a CD of
highlights is a fool’s task, but I’ll try anyway.
There’s 1996’s “Something 4 the Weekend,” a
blissful Brit-pop confection of pounding power chords, ELO-ish
harmonies, and a bizarre, possibly apocryphal quotation from George
Foreman. On “It’s Not the End of the World?” from
2001’s excellent Rings around the
World, frontman Gruff Rhys croons sweetly
while a string section soars overhead, lending an impossible poignancy
to lines such as “Turn all the hate in the world into a
mockingbird/Make it fly away.” The Welsh-language offerings
“Ysbeidiau Heulog” and “Blerwytirhwng?” might
look dismayingly unpronounceable on paper, but give them a couple of
spins and you’ll soon be singing lines such as “Fe deimlon ni esgusion yn”
like a native. From the sneaky little banjo figure that pops up amid
the maelstrom of “Demons” to the cheerful calypso rhythms
of “Northern Lites,” every track on Songbook is rife with tiny
surprises. The big surprise, of course, is that the Super Furry Animals
aren’t the biggest rock band in the world.
Shivaree
Who’s Got Trouble?
(Zoe/Rounder)
Fronted by the improbably named
Ambrosia Parsley, Shivaree inhabits a noir-ish enclave midway between the cabaret and the
juke joint. Too rootsy for the freaks and too freaky for the roots
fans, the trio of talented misfits seemed, until recently, destined
for obscurity after their first two releases went nowhere. Then the
band’s luck turned. With a boost from Quentin Tarantino, who
used a track from the first album at the end of Kill Bill 2, the eccentric
Californians got another chance to shine. Who’s Got Trouble?,
their newest full-length, combines their trademark Southern-gothic
atmospherics with twitchy funk, sultry jazz, and unapologetic Erik
Satie lifts. Parsley’s little-girl warble sounds both
sinister and innocent, and guest turns from downtown skronkmeisters
Sex Mob and cello maven Jane Scarpantoni deepen the decadence
without compromising the backwoods-shanty vibe. Here’s to
second chances.
This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2005.
