Super Furry Animals
Rings Around the World
[Epic]
Rating: 8.9
To date, the Super Furry Animals have driven a blue, techno-blaring tank to
gigs before selling it to Don Henley, broken the record for saying "fuck" in
a charting, Steely Dan-sampling pop single, constructed a Macy's Day-sized
balloon of a soda-slurping raccoon, subjected themselves to alien abduction
in an ILM-created music video, recorded the highest-selling Welsh-language
album ever, and remixed the Beatles for a Grammy-nominated record. To say
the least, they've kept audiences on their toes with their audacity and
playfulness.
It would seem that there's little left for SFA to accomplish,
except for those ever-elusive multiplatinum worldwide sales. Rings
Around the World aims for that and beyond. Not only do members of the
Velvet Underground and the Beatles offhandedly appear on the record
(completely inconspicuously), but Rings Around the World will be the
first album ever to see debut release on DVD complete with 5.1 Stereo Surround
Sound, videos for each song directed by Dogme directors, cartoonists, and
underground radicals, and track-by-track remixes by the likes of Matmos, Kid
606, and Brave Captain. The project sounds ambitious and brilliant on paper,
but it's nothing without the music to back it up. No fear, as SFA have
pulled out their entire catalog of styles and whipped up their best album to
date-- a bold claim to the upper echelon of rock.
On the whole, Rings Around the World infuses 1970s soul, sunshine, and
sparkle to more familiar Furries territory. Philly horns and strings seep
from "It's Not the End of the World," "Presidential Suite," and the first
single, "Juxtaposed with U." Like their past single, "Northern Lights,"
"Juxtaposed" comes across more as a genre exercise-- this time favoring AM
soul over tropicalia-- but flips the song with vocoder verses and a
rollerskate-handclap chorus refrain of, "You've got to tolerate all those
people that you hate/ I'm not in love with you but I won't hold that against
you." Singer Gruff Rhys claims that Bobby Brown turned down an invitation to
duet on the "let's get juxtaposed" lines, but the song remains subversively
genius, nonetheless. If older singles, such as "Demons" off Radiator,
modernized Bowie's Space Oddity, than "Juxtaposed" is clearly the heir
to "Young Americans" and "Fame."
"Run, Christian, Run!" gallops into late-era Byrds territory, with steel
guitars and modified twang, though thematically, the lyrics run the exact
opposite of Sad Sweetheart's "The Christian Life." Mellow acoustic
strumming and thick harmonies of lines like "you deserve to die" give way to
manic breakbeats on the breath-taking "No Sympathy," perhaps the first pop
song ever to fuse idyllic folk with IDM, not counting SFA's own "Mountain
People," which fused idyllic folk with house.
Surprisingly, though Rings stands as the Super Furry Animals' boldest
pop album yet, few songs reach into rocking territory. The heaviest moments
pop up in the first third of the record, after the somnambulist stomp of the
opener. "Sidewalk Serfer Girl" splices metal riffing with skittering
electronics and the ever-present Huge Chorus, and the title track takes the
upbeat Britpop of their debut album and layers on spectral details. Rhys
growls in the speaker-blowing outro to the otherwise cheery "Receptacle for
the Respectable."
The music is paisley, sun-heated, and layered, and juxtaposed to Rhys'
satirical and heartfelt lyrics, the result is timeless. Just reading the
song titles gives one the sense of humor and rancor that courses through the
record. As mentioned before, it's impossible to deny Bowie's muse in SFA's
career, despite their continued costuming in anoraks and cargo pants instead
of red mullets, white scarves, spandex and suits. The chameleon act is left
to the tunes. More conveniently, SFA will butt a "Let's Dance" up against
a "Black Country Rock" or "Speed of Life" on the same album side, all while
maintaining a rustic, inherently Welsh vibe. Princess Di, "Princess of Wales,"
never set foot inside the country, and karma caught up. Heed the warning
and dive in.
-Brent DiCrescenzo