press : reviews : 2  | : 3   : sessions

Motherfokker ~ Slow Life b-side
A trippy outer-space cosmic-folk ramble, replete with raps about alien abduction, the pyramids, and a guest spot from Wayne Kramer from the MC5. At least, that's who he claims to be. Oh, and Gruff goes "Mooooootherfooooooka..." all the way through. Pretty cool. ~ BBC Radio 1 ~ Bethan & Huw

Hello Sunshine ~ single
It's always good to hear the word 'minger' in song, and the doleful Gruff Rhys uses it gloriously here. ~ Joe Gooden, BBC Wales Music

Its simplicity drapes over the wah guitars and the ever-sweetly naive Gruff whose vocals peter out into childlike brilliance, whether he hits or misses the notes. ~ Karen Piper, The Stereo Effect

Hello Sunshine is a languid, blissed out three minutes of West Coast pop, with Gruff's tender second verse vocal intoning "I'm a minger, you're a minger too / So come on minger, I want to ming with you"! With a suitably uplifting chorus to match, it's one of those records to help banish the end of summer blues. ~ Ben Hogwood, musicomh.com

Varsity.co.uk


Golden Retriever ~ single
The first taster from Phantom Planet [sic] is a bonkers glam-rocker that sees the Furries playing to their strengths. Forget the saccharine faux-soul of 'Juxtaposed With U'... this one could grow into SFA's best dancefloor stomp since Hermann Loves Pauline. ~ Bethan and Huw, BBC Radio 1

It seems that the Yeti may not be confined to legends of the 'abominable snowman' of Nepal but can in fact be found in the mountains of North Wales - a changeling influenced by the sound of the country's finest psych-pop renegades." ~ Dotmusic

In which Gruff Rhys dons his Robert Johnson hat, goes down to the crossroads and finds the ghost of The Sweet walking the campest dog in the world. ~ BBC Wales Music

9/10 ~ Dotmusic


Sex, War and Robots ~ album track
The loveliest song of the year thus far, this pining pedal-steel ballad - a country cousin to Rings Around The World's 'Run! Christian, Run!' - is also Huw Bunford's first turn in the Super Furries' vocal spotlight [second after b-side 'Gypsy Space Muffin']. "There are a lot of songs on this record about broken relationships and war," says head Furry Gruff Rhys. ~ Barney Hoskyns for Rock's Back Pages

Phantom Planet [sic] is the band's best work to date, as accessible as it is inventive, and with the festival season underway, they've produced the soundtrack to the summer of --fingers crossed--sultry evenings and smouldering bonfires. ~ Q Magazine

The Super Furry Animals weren't born; they simply descended from the Welsh mountains, clutching handfuls of psychedelic fungi, sporting huge grins. They then proceeded to show us mere mortals how trailblazing pop music should be made. Accordingly, listening to the new album, Phantom Power, is like a million suns exploding in your face. But don't worry ~ it comes dripping with gallons of saccharine harmonies that cool and soothe before the glare of their white-hot brilliance. ~ Merek Cooper for Discorder Online

The greatest bunch of sonic surrealists to ever set forth from the British Isles just continues to shock and amaze with its perfectly bizarre blends of lush harmonies, magical melodies, electronic over-and-undertones and complex song construction tactics. ~ Doug Levy for CMJ

The mercurial Phantom Power is less ambitious than Rings Around the World and less catchy than Fuzzy Logic, but it is saturated with aching pop moments and sophisticated arrangements, each one coming on like a distant dream of a favorite 60's song. And though the songs may at first glance seem whimsical (named after dogs, valets and Venus and Serena Williams), they often serve here as gateways to deeper reflections on war (be it in the Falklands or the Persian Gulf), nuclear power and the tarnished American Dream. ~ Neil Strauss for New York Times

This is what Super Furry Animals do: make rich, thought-provoking music that smuggles in imprecations under the cover of blinding sunshine. ~ John Mulvey for The Sunday Times

There's more per capita stylistic zig-zaggery here than a barrelful of Flaming Lips; atmospheric folk rock, country-tinged dreampop, technofried psychedelia and Brian Wilson-esque orchestral interludes abound on the quirkysexycool disc. ~ Fred Mills

And there's the beauty of the Super Furry Animals. Inside layers of music that echo everything from the Beach Boys and The Band to the Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev but twist into a style distinctive to the SFA themselves, they invent worlds that seem almost impregnable to the outsider initially, but are actually so straight forward in their outlook that it is their simplicity that is confusing. ~ BBC Manchester

Track 5, 'The Piccolo Snare,' is such a terrific song that it took us a while to quit replaying it and listen to the rest of the also-quite-good record. ~ Entertainment Weekly

All round, a warped wonder. ~ New Zealand Herald

It's a highly polished affair, filled with the widescreen classic pop that Gruff Rhys and co carry off so effortlessly. The sheer variety is dazzling; no two songs sound the same and everything from Burt Bacharach balladry to West Coast stoner-rock gets a look in. ~ Andrew Lynch for Entertainment Ireland

Tempers the giddy IMAX ambition of 2001's Rings Around The World with some art-house despair....the band reprogram decades of pop history for iPod shuffle-play, and styles from electronica to country fade in and out like an old man's memory...(A) ~ Spin, August 03

Phantom Power is a fabulous record, a baffling, joyful, touching, frustrating, silly, totally seductive album that you can lose yourself in for an hour, a day, a week. ~ Mojo, August 03

An album of hope and humour and beauty, Phantom Power is frequently as deep and mysterious as its title intimates. Feel it for yourself. ~ Uncut, August 03

The greatest bunch of sonic surrealists to ever set forth from the British Isles just continues to shock and amaze with its perfectly bizarre blends of lush harmonies, magical melodies, electronic over-and-undertones and complex song construction tactics.. ~ CMJ, July August 03

It has endless reserves of warmth, sophistication, and Rhys's sly political wit. ~ Ben Greenman for The New Yorker

Raw and eclectic, Phantom Power is a dreamy delight full of psychedelic West Coast Americana and orchestral pop. On the surface, it's an accomplished, fun, must-hear album, but lurking beneath are complex soundscapes and bizarre imagery. ~ Lauren McMenemy for The Advertiser, Australia

At turns ethereal and riotous, Phantom Power proves as anxious, overloaded, and shellshocked as any early-century newspaper reader. ~ Jessica Winter for City Pages Minneapolis

It's thrillingly diverse, but among the techno-country hoedowns, surrealist surf-pop, cartoon metal anthems and burnished symphonic balladry, the band frequently forgets to be hip and instead allows itself to sound like ELO, Fleetwood Mac, Waylon Jennings or Boston. What nerds! And how fantastic! ~ Sunday Star-Times

It's an astonishingly accomplished, sophisticated phantasm of tunes, a pure kind of pop that takes the Beatles as a given and invokes the psychedelic pop of 1967 with audacious confidence and maturity. (9/10 stars) ~ Shane Nichols for Australian Financial Review

With 2002's fantastic Rings Around the World and the newly released -- and even better -- Phantom Power, the Super Furry Animals have created back-to-back miracles, two impossibly entertaining, gorgeous pop albums with thoughtful, evocative and occasionally goofy lyrics that apply the personal to the political without being grating or sentimental. It's a balancing act, really, and these guys have extraordinary balance. ~ Dan Reines for The Pitch


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