Super Furry Animals
Rings Around The World
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NATN Recommended
Super Furry Animals
Rings Around The World
Epic, 2001
RiYL: Flaming Lips, Radiohead, Beatles, Love |
The profoundly uncompromising Welsh quintet stepped to a major label for this record, and the effect is quite clear: the budget was bigger, and the fruits are in the stew. The album itself was mixed in 5.1 surround sound, and though it sounds great on a little boom box, the experience is totally different if you have headphones or surround sound speakers -- the splashes of weirdness and electronic treats SFA always weaves into its tunes show up in unexpected places.
Further down the technology path, the album was simultaneously released on DVD, replete with an eclectic visual version of the album, remixes of every song, five bonus tracks, and more. So rest assured SFA is getting its money's worth out of its new deal.
But all would be for naught if the record wasn't worth its salt in the first place. Thankfully, and expectedly, it is. Between meditative bookends "Alternate Route To Vulcan Street" and "Fragile Happiness," listeners are taken on a nearly 70-minute Furry journey with stops in the uplifting pop mini-universe "Shoot Doris Day," the electro-sexual cityscape of "Juxtapozed With U," the good-meets-evil musical forest of "Receptacle For The Respectable" and the "Presidential Suite" atop the '90s political world.
Protean centerpiece "No Sympathy" is one of the Super Furries' crowning achievements, an impishly cruel tirade that begins as an acoustic fireside rumination and ends in a blast of pulsating techno. But just as inspiring is the seven-minute "Run! Christian, Run!," which imposes its atheistic urges in a gentle yet indelible melodic manifesto.
Chief songwriter/singer Gruff Rhys is at his most honest on Rings, eschewing much of the addictively obscure lyrical material of his past (Chilean goat-eating bats, chewing gum in bed, hanging out with international marijuana smugglers) for a bit more state-of-the-world type of fodder. Near-title track "(Drawing) Rings Around The World" cleverly muses on the proliferation of orbiting space junk that surrounds earth, while "It's Not The End Of The World?" boils down humanistic worries like getting older by contemplating the big picture: "As our hair turns grey / everything is far from A.O.K. / at least it's not the end of the world."
Still, those wishing for the more random and obscurely imaginitive sides of SFA will get what they hope for: "Rings" references manga sequels and radioactivity while the delightfully choppy "Sidewalk Serfer Girl" invents Patty Whitebull, who falls asleep for 15 years then awakes to order pizza and marvel at how the world has changed.
Rings Around The World is SFA's most ambitious album to date, and that is no small feat, given the wide-ranging exploits of the group's past. Having already honed their songwriting and playing skills to sharp points, the Super Furry Animals took a step back, broadened their horizons, and dropped a diamond of a fifth album.
Ridiculously, the band doesn't yet have a Stateside deal for this record (following the dissolution of Flydaddy), but nevertheless, they are poised to take over the globe with Rings Around The World. Brace yourselves.
TROY CARPENTER | Troy Carpenter founded NATN from a Chicago apartment during the ambitious winter of 1998 with co-conspirators Ben French and Jonathan Cohen. After a five-year stint in New York, he and wife Lourdes have recently relocated to Indianapolis, where he spends days listening to music and nights in the kitchen at Elements restaurant. Musical heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Super Furry Animals. What else makes life worth living: Sushi, Phucty, runs in the park, and the Atlanta Braves.