Running Rings Around Anyone Else (Rings Around The World - Super Furry Animals)

Member Name: Mac The Red

Product:	Rings Around The World - Super Furry Animals
Date:	10/09/01 (54 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Mad, Confusing, Eccentric, Individual

Disadvantages: Only Fragile

So onto the Super Furries fifth main album (bsides album notwithstanding).

As usual, it's regular SFA territory. Madness interspersed with great beauty.

Opening song on the album Alternative Route.... is a downbeat semi electro start to the album with maudlin vocals.

Sidewalk Serfer Girl is a metaphorical slap in the face and sounds like it escaped from Fuzzy Logic and has just returned. Guitars crash in and out of more electronic effects.

Drawing Rings.... starts off sounding like a theme to a computer game and bounces around happily and then ends all frazzled out and scorched with loads of phone rings and mad samples. Classic SFA.

It's Not The End.... again finds us in Fuzzy Logic territory, with the strings evident. Typically surreal lyrics that somehow make sense stick around too.

Receptacle for the Respectable (great title!) follows and strums along with a basic acoustic guitar and funky handclaps and morphs into a full on growlfest at the end of the song that apes some of music's heavier outfits.

A Touch Sensitive & Shoot Doris Day morph into one another and fly by without much notice.

No Sympathy is one of the best songs on the album. With its threatening vocal it makes great listening. But what really makes the tune is the complete mad freakout at the end which just burns and leaves you feeling weak at the end.

Juxtaposed. Well, arguably THE song of the year. Mad lyrics with a slightly calpypso feel combine to produce a classic hit.

Presidential Suite follows and is breathtaking in its simplicity and sheer inate beauty. The chorus is poetry in motion. It is at this point that the album breaks away from being a good album to an excellent one.

Run Christian Run carries this on. The song just takes you on a journey and if you close your eyes you can feel yourself on it. Lilting along, it's one of those songs that just makes you take a d
eep breath and sigh contentedly.

The album ends on a bit of a curio in Fragile Happiness, which starts off sounding like how you feel when you wake up after the night before. A very hungover feel permeates through the entire song. You kind of wish they'd just finished a song earlier to be honest.

So, overall an amazing record with few flaws from a truly unique band. You come away feeling dazed and confused but with a smile on your face. Only Super Furry Animals could have made this record, and for that alone in a world where blandness seems now to be standard, they deserve to be loved.

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