Super Furry Animals, Rings Around The World (Epic) 9+
There must be something in the water in Wales. Two of the most ambitious, quirky, 21st-century psychedelic bands are Welshmen Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Super Furry Animals. Like Gorky's, SFA have been around for a while -- creating bold psych-pop gems with little notice, at least from North America. 1999's Guerrilla was their OK Computer, experimenting with electronica without the hyperbolic hype. Last year, when third-rate Radiohead copycats Coldplay were celebrated, SFA quietly confounded and charmed the lucky few who heard the lovely Mwng, sung entirely in Welsh. With their fifth album, Rings Around The World, SFA have reached an extravagant peak. The songs are tied together by some vague theme of global communication and information pollution. However, the less-than revelatory lyrics are not the main attraction. It's the wealth of sounds and trippy melodies that make this 2001's update of The Flaming Lip's opus, The Soft Bulletin. The first five songs are minor pop classics, an astounding cornucopia of Beach Boys choruses, killer hooks and studio wizardry. They rush by so quickly that you want to hear them again before carrying on with the rest of the album. The pace slows to the erotically sinister "[A] Touch Sensitive," an instrumental mix of Orbital, Clinton and Gary Numan complete with digitized female panting. "No! Sympathy" begins as a languid, acoustic ballad that could have come from The Small Faces' mod psychedelic opera Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. But after the final kiss-off line, "You deserve to die," the song explodes into the most vicious techno fury heard outside of Alec Empire's brood of Digital Hardcore cronies. The single "Juxtapozed With U" provides light-hearted relief, with Charlie's Angels violins and Peter Frampton-style vocoder. Here Gruff Rhys sounds oddly like Elvis Costello fronting a Vegas showband. "Presidential Suite," gets a little too fluffy, like a Muzak remake of The Style Council. After the album's sole weak track, SFA introduces "Run! Christian, Run!" with a forlorn melodica, with an insistent two-note electronic blurp leading you towards release in a guitar-heavy climax. The album closes with the gentle synthesizer-tinged ballad, "Fragile Happiness." The ride is over, and I never even noticed where the heck heavyweight guests John Cale and Sir Paul McCartney came in, nor do I care. If you have a DVD player, the fun goes on, with twelve film shorts in full surround sound. More accessible than countrymen Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, and heavier than Mercury Rev, Rings Around The World is a perfectly balanced headtrip.
