SFA wahey! (Super Furry Animals)

Member Name: wicked_witch

Product:	Super Furry Animals
Date:	08/08/03 (808 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great crowd interaction, great crowd, it was like an anti-Dubya convention

Disadvantages: No "Hometown Unicorn" or "Venus and Serena"

Oh my god. I am just this very moment home from the Super Furry Animals gig for T on the Fringe (part of Edinburgh festival which showcases a bunch of great bands) and that’s all I have to say (that and the rest of this million word opinion). Oh my god. I am absolutely stinking of beer, my hair is full of sweat, water, and, bizarrely, what smells like whiskey and I seem to have gone temporarily deaf. Usually it’s either straight to the pub or straight to bed (depending on amount of energy drinks consumed and how bad I smell), but I’m buzzing after this one and just have to write this while its still fresh in my mind.

Please forgive me for not reviewing the support band, as I didn’t see them. Oops. Sure they were very good. Also, I apologise for the bit when this turns into a political rant.

The venue, the Queens hall, would not be my choice for a Furries gig. While they probably don’t have enough fan power to sell out Edinburgh Corn Exchange, the atmosphere in the delicately lit Queens hall is just a little too posh for hundreds of sweaty Furries fans. There are too many seats and not enough space to jump. Also they charge £4.15 for a vodka and red bull. Grrrr. Why don’t I just drink pints like normal gig goers do?

After a freak spotting of Bob ex-Idlewild, chatting up several nice indie blokes (and getting a phone number woo), I’m beginning to get a little impatient, patience never being my strong point. But then one of the Furries strong points is knowing just how long to keep the audience waiting before they strike. Which they eventually do, with the beautiful new track “Slow Life”, which starts out with wonderful techno-ey beats that has the entire crowd shaking their asses about like it’s a rave instead of a gig. It turns into a lovely, warm sounding guitar track that sounds rather easy-going on CD, but makes a fantastic live prospect, with the added aplomb of Rhys’s
wolf-howling.

Howling would be the correct word, as barely-understandable (due to both that lilting Welsh accent and the fact that he’s probably stoned) Gruf announces the next song…(in response to a rather obvious shout from the crowd) “Yes. We are the Super Furry Animals. This is a song about a dog”, and they launch into bounce-along newbie “Golden Retriever”, which is a funky, bass heavy and utterly danceable song that has the entire crowd on its feet. Its delightfully fun and the lyrics are typically Super Furry- “STOP! Said the puppy, when I met him at the zebra cross. You need protection from every direction, but she’ll get you anyhow, She’s a Go-o-olden retriever…”. You have to wonder how much dope these boys smoke.

The boys are on fine form tonight, despite looking as wasted as usual. Lead guitarist Huw Bunford is on particularly good form, swaggering/swaying around with his electric swinging dangerously near other band member’s heads. The atmosphere is as electric as it usually is at a Furries gigs- because the fans aren’t just regular fans; they tend to be rather rabid and devoted, knowing every word to every obscure and random single, B-side and album back-burner.

Behind the boys is a big screen playing the usual things it plays at Furries gigs…tonnes of optical illusions and grainy, pop-art images of Gruf singing, plus during “Golden Retriever”, it, strangely enough, shows a cartoon retriever bouncing along.

The sound is well set-up too, with tortured howls and guitar feedback sound waves bouncing off the walls and straight into your eardrums, making you experience the delightful temporary tinnitis I’m dealing with now.

Of course tonight is to promote the newbie album, “Phantom Power” so we get “Hello Sunshine”, “Liberty Belle”, “Golden Retriever”, “B
leed Forever” and “Out of Control”.

“Hello Sunshine” is gorgeously executed; it’s a dreamy, warm sounding track that all the indie kids know the words to already. So of course, we all know to shout out “I am a minger, you’re a minger too, so come on minger, I want to ming with you”, which is possibly the second best shout-out Furries lyric ever (After “you know they don’t give a f**k”).

The really stand out track from the “Phantom Power” album, tonight, for me anyway, is “Out of Control”. This is a political bitch-fest about, well take a guess from the lyrics- “Ninja Jihad, suck my oil, feel my vineyard” “I am scum, you are scum”. A very pointed song about some idiots carelessness about other peoples lives, it seems to be held in great reverence tonight, the crowd seem happy to go along with an anti-establishment theme. More about that later. The only thing I would have liked to hear which I didn’t was “Venus and Serena” but hey, nothings perfect!

As usual “Rings Around the World” is another favourite tonight, a typical gig fave, glossy and cute and a little lite for the Furries but goes down a treat tonight for everyone involved, including the Furries themselves, who announce the track by saying to another rather obvious statement from the crowd “yes, we are STILL the Super Furry Animals”, and play it flawlessly. It’s never been my fave, but again, it makes such a great live track that it’s impossible not to start shouting “RING RING, RING RING, Rings around the world”.

“Receptacle for the Respectable” starts out as a easy-going, medium paced guitar track that builds up to a exhilarating climax which gives way to a foreboding guitar track and a snarling, effects laden voice which the kids bounce and snarl along to quite happily. Ag
ain, it goes down a treat for the sweaty kids up front.

Also from the “RATW” album is “Run Christian Run” accompanied by very apt flames on the screen, and the sugary pop track “Juxtaposed with U” which pretty much all Furries fans acknowledge as cack. Except when its live of course, because when you put a bunch of sweaty, hormonal 19-25 (ish) year olds in a room, give them a band and a lax house policy on restricted substances, lyrics like “You gotta tolerate, all those people that ya hate, I’m not in love with you but I wont hold that against you, juxtaposed, juxtaposed, just suppose I’m juxtaposed with you….” Are enough to bring a sense of sixties hippy peace and love to the building. Before you know it your hugging your neighbour (who just happens to be a cute indie boy) and crooning the lyrics at each other.

We also get a short interlude with the yetis (yes you read that line right). If you aren’t acquainted with the craziness of the Super Furry Animals, they have people dress up as yetis and come onstage and play the instruments, especially the drums and the bongos. Everyone loves the yetis, they make us laugh like nothing else, and there’s always some stoned kid who is a virgin to Furries gigs and is looking at the yetis and then looking at everyone else, as if to say “Is it just me who sees that?” no mate, it isn’t, and the yetis as usual bang out a bossy, funky and extremely dancey track which everyone loves. It’s my dream to be a yeti. A bass-playing yeti. There’s also a man in an inflatable space suit onstage at one point. All this is true, I did not take anything illegal. Fanbloodytastic.

From “Guerilla” we have “Do or Die” and the lovely summery calypso track “Northern Lites” which goes down well today, no doubt because of the scorching weather we had earlier. Sadly there are few &#
8220;Fuzzy Logic” tracks tonight, which is a shame seeing as its one of my favourite Furries albums. I particularly would have liked to hear “Hometown Unicorn”. Still, never mind, the final track before the encore is worth it.

If you’ve heard one Furries track, it might well be this one. It starts as its always does, with a quote from the late, great Bill Hicks, which states that all governments are liars. Its typical Bill Hicks, with screaming political fury condensed into comedy. And as soon as I hear it, I know what it means. Up on the screen flashes pictures of George Bush and Tony Blair, to thunderous boos from the entire audience. I literally seen one guy spitting at the images, they evoked such disgust from everyone in the room, and gets us all on our political high horses for “Man Don’t give a F**k” and its absolutely amazing. Fast, incendiary and with a heavy enough bassline to have the entire floor of Furries fans jumping up and down in exact unison and screaming the following…

Spent some times in stormy weather
under clouds of my dilemma
now there’s nothing much to do
except for sitting in front of televisions
staring back at me
I'm just waiting for the microwaves
to wash me into the sea
You know they don't give a f**k about anybody else (repeated approximately 19’381 times)
Out of focus ideology
keep the masses from majority
experts blame my (stupid)? Plan
Left to bleed while vultures glide

You know they don’t give a f**k about anybody else (repeat approximately 29’112 times)
The main part of the song is the “They don’t give a f**k bit”, its repeated over and over and over and drilling it into the skull of every establishment-hating kid in the building, while accompanied by pictures of dictators, interspersed with Bush and Blair. Oh yeah. We hate them. And we LOVE Furries for so elo
quently *cough* pointing it out for us. You can feel the fans joy mixed with an intense hatred of a people on the screen, the knowledge that for many Bush seems no better than a dictator, and the bile rises for the fact that there’s little we can do about it.

The Furries leave the stage after “Man don’t give a f**k” leaving the crowd both exhilarated at seeing such a bloody good band and damn pissed off at the w**kers on the screen. The upshot of all this ranting on my part is that they are an extremely clever band. They know their demographic well and know exactly how to get a strong, almost idol-worship reaction by showing them something they can hate and then giving them a song they can yell along to. The song provokes a split-personality reaction from everyone.
After this we have a ten-minute blast of what is pretty much techno music, and we all love it and get down to the music big style. Much as I am an indie kid, I do love the odd dance track, and this is how I like it, mean, dirty, interesting and totally irresistible. Just as our patience is getting low, they bring on the yetis, which finish us off with a reprisal of “Man don’t give a fuck”. Then its all over and its back to the posh reality of the Queens hall and the fact that we all smell like we’ve haven’t washed in weeks.

They were brilliant. They are pretty much veterans now, they’ve been around a good while, and for all people say they haven’t been good since “Guerilla” I think they’ve been proved wrong tonight. The tracks from “Phantom Power” are very, very strong, better than the previous album, and it looks like a real return to form for them. They look fit and fat and happy, and as a result they know just how to make their fans tick. No wait, they know just how to make their fans go off like a bomb. The playing is flawless and perfect, the climaxes are drawn out just the right
amount of time, instrumentally they certainly know what their doing but they also have an innate ability to interact with the audience and give them exactly what they want. You usually see some reserved people at gigs who want to jump along but are a bit scared to, here there’s none of that. All around smiles and laughs and happy shouts. Even my mate, the most serious political punk fan, couldn’t help getting excited tonight. I haven’t been to a gig this good in a long time. And yes, that includes the Cooper Temple Clause.

There’s nothing quite like a gig of a band you know and love well for a sense of community. Long after the last strains of “Man don’t…” there are complete strangers grabbing each other and shouting the lyrics out, along with more than one cry of “Bush is an arse”. Yep, it seems we are all in one mind. We are all Super Furry Animals fans, and now we’re all going home to celebrate the Super Furry Animals, Howard Marks, and most especially, some dead comedian called Bill Hicks. DOWN WITH BUSH!

PS- I do apologise if I’ve offended any supporters of Bush or Blair, but I’m think I just channelled the spirit of Bill Hicks and I can’t help it. Also, I have no idea whether this opinion is any good or not; I just battered it out in a state of excitement. My apologies if it makes no sense. Its funny what a few yeti outfits and an inflatable space man can do to you.

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