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unofficially super furry animals - sfa - Guerrilla - [discography].
Discography
Guerrilla
Creation CRECD242
  1. The Citizens' Band (Hidden Track) [#]
  2. Check It Out
  3. Do Or Die [#]
  4. The Turning Tide [#]
  5. Northern Lites [#]
  6. Night Vision [#]
  7. Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)
  8. A Specific Ocean
  9. Some Things Come From Nothing
  10. The Door To This House Remains Open
  11. The Teacher [#]
  12. Fire In My Heart [#]
  13. The Sound Of Life Today
  14. Chewing Chewing Gum
  15. Keep The Cosmic Trigger Happy [#]
  16. Chewing Chewing Gum (Reprise)

    17. Click audio to hear an audio sample or # to see tab/chords where available; song titles link to lyrics.
    [Please support this site - click here to buy this CD!]
Highest chart position: 10
Release date: 7 June 1999

Notes
  • Guerrilla's blend of rock and techno was in one sense a massive departure for the group, who had until this point stuck to writing guitar pop songs, but in another sense a return - after all, SFA had started out as a techno group.
  • The album comes in two versions - one with a cardboard outer box, one without. The cardboard box has an introduction to citizens' band radio printed inside it.
  • To get the secret track, put the CD in, press play, and then hold down rewind.
  • The Guerrilla album and singles featured Pete Fowler models on the covers, as opposed to the cartoons which had been on the Radiator covers.
  • Gruff's track by track notes:elody Maker 12th June 1999
  • 'Check It Out' - mini techno opus to kick stuff off. Very very short. "It's an invitation to check out the record. Like the way a lot of hip-hop albums are formatted - you have an introduction and an ending and it's structured. It's informed by that."
  • 'Do Or Die' - ramalama surf pop with a sampled car noise. "That's a song with a ridiculously positive outlook. It's a driving song, so we stuck noises of cars driving by, so even if you're not in a car it feels like you are. I went through a down time and that was trying to kickstart ourselves back into gear. It's about sorting your life out and trying to regain a lust for life. It's got really daft lyrics. A lot of the lyrics on this album are really flippant."
  • 'The Turning Tide' - gentle nursery-rhyme ballad, � la 'Hometown Unicorn'. "That's a bit more serious. We wanted to put strings on initially, but strings in rock are problematic so we asked Sean O'Hagan from the High Llamas to see what he could come up with and he had a totally different approach, so that was very interesting. Lyrically it's about living in a time of change, or wanting to embrace change. It's things like service being so slow. We're living in a time of service industry and Britain is fundamentally cut out for socialism because people don't want to serve you. I had some money last year and I was trying to buy a fridge and it took me three months to get it delivered. Eventually they had it in a warehouse and I was phoning up saying 'It's my fridge, can I pick it up?' And they said, 'No, you've got to stick by the rules.' And I was like, 'I want to pick it up! My food's going off!' I'm worried that it's a bit of a suicidal song, a bit Reginald Perrin. That wasn't my intention, the intention w
  • 'Northern Lites' - trumpet-led calypso-tinged hit single. "That's inspired by weather phenomena on weather channels. The weather was headline news quite often last year and I don't remember the weather being on the news so much before. I had this tune for a few years and I know what kind of beat to play it to. So because of the subject matter and the El Ni�o phenomenon, I tried the calypso beat. It could've been a rock song, I'm hoping someone's gonna make a rock version of it."
  • 'Night Vision' - fuzzed-up garage'n'roll stormer. With shouting! "This is seeking revenge on bouncers that've caused you grief. It's about Saturday nights out in Cardiff, where you need a suit and tie to get into most places and it can get pretty aggressive. It's about when everyone gets chucked out and you try and get back in and the police turn up. It's probably the most aggressive-sounding thing on the record. Five years ago we couldn't go out anywhere because we were banned from everywhere."
  • 'Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)' - fucked-up techno psychedelia rammed with weird acid noises. "I don't think it's comic at all. We don't mind making people smile, but I don't want people on their knees, pissing themselves laughing. It's pretty grim, the subject matter. It's about tumours on the brain, which is pretty serious. They're just starting to find lumps behind people's ears now, hefty mobile phone users. It's a tumour of our time. it's the new smoking, using mobile phones, because there's permanent damage to your brain. If you smoke and use mobile phones, you're really hard. It's a celebration of the mobile phone because we're in the age of communication, and also a damning of it. It's based around the ringing of one of our mobile phones and that's the idea behind the music - the music created by mobile phone."
  • 'A Specific Ocean' - serene instrumental interlude. "That's a kind of dubby link into 'Some Things Come From Nothing'. It's a time to get your breath and make room."
  • 'Some Things Come From Nothing' - atmospheric emotional slowie with haunting keyboards. "That was recorded really quickly. Cian had this acidy tune and it was in his keyboard for ages. He sampled himself playing drums in a Grandaddy style and I came into the room on an out-of-tune acoustic guitar and someone sampled me doing that. It was written and recorded simultaneously. The sentiment of the lyrics was that nothing seems to have any substance any more. It's a very circular lyrics and it's quite pessimistic. Something comes from nothing but nothing seems to come from something. It's trying to look at both sides."
  • 'The Door To This House Remains Open' - Hawaiian drum'n'bass. No, really. "We were jamming a version of 'Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?' by Rod Stewart and the riff changed over the half an hour we played it. I moved into a new house and I liked the sound of it. It's an optimistic song about starting a new chapter of your life and how everybody's door should be open and every country should have an open-door policy, which is obviously idealistic, almost embarrassingly so. But that's how I felt at the time, so fuck it."
  • 'The Teacher' - uptempo pop stormer. Classic sunny Super Furries. "That's a song about Bunf. He's very inspiring and I'm sure he gets pissed off that I've written so many songs about his hamsters and his career. This is a ridiculously upbeat pop song which may sound like it's from a child's perspective, but it's actually from the teacher's perspective. It's probably the most stupid thing on the record. That was a decisive moment in putting the record together. Putting that song on the record changed the record completely. We could have stuck 'A Matter Of Time' on, which is really laid back, and that would've changed the album into something more self-indulgent. So when we put the album together, we decided to make it more concise."
  • 'Fire In My Heart' - tender country love song. Wave those lighters! "A country and western song. As far as I'm concerned, it's called 'Heartburn', but that was vetoed. 'heartburn' is more poignant. It's the most clich�d lyric I've ever written, but it works. It's a song for other people to make covers of. I wrote it absolutely sincerely, but when I don't feel like I did at the time, I laugh at it. We were in America recently and some journalist thought it was a joke, an Elton John pisstake. It's about all kinds of people in your life. Like most songs it's about 10 different people and 10 different situations."
  • 'Chewing Chewing Gum' - spaced out Beach Boys psychedelic meanderings. "It's a lyric Cian started singing because he went to bed chewing chewing gum and woke up with it stuck in his hair. That's essentially what the song's about. It's an advice lyrics, a guide to various aspects of living your life. Maybe 'Fire In My Heart' is soul advice, this is more practical, something you can avoid."
  • 'Keep The Cosmic Trigger Happy' - breezy Beatlesy oompah pop. "It's quite an embarrassing title, but I wanted to be ambitious, so I wrote something on a cosmic scale. It's ridiculously happy, a song about being in love and going out to the Hippo club in Cardiff and feeling bulletproof and unstoppable. We could have finished the album with something epic and massive, but we felt we did that with the last one and we want all the albums to be different, not to follow a particular formula. So this is our concise, crisp album and we wanted to end it on an upbeat note."
  • Album Credits
  • Sean O'Hagan String Arrangements

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