Runs rings round the competition! (Rings Around The World - Super Furry Animals)

Member Name: Red Earwig

Product:	Rings Around The World - Super Furry Animals
Date:	01/11/01 (78 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Diverse sounds, Good musically, and produced

Disadvantages: Not like the Super Furrys of old

I have been eagerly awaiting the release of the Super Furry Animal's fifth album, "Rings Around The World", since I saw their mature and introspective set at the Leeds Carling Festival in 2000 (OK, doing your encore in "Furry Animal" outfits might not be your idea of mature or introspective but, hey, humour me for a while!).


I have held a soft spot for The Super Furry Animals, since the all action punk harmony of 1994's album release, "Fuzzy Logic", these Welsh lads to me almost epitimise Wales in the modern age - heritage (the Welsh choral society teaching them everything they know about harmony?), blended with the dispair of Punk riffs, and admitedly, not always, rather bland and meaningless lyrics (so few of us seem to have anything to say - the dumbing down of a nation continues apace!). However, last years live set, indicated a new calmness and yes, maturity.


"Rings Around The World", does not dispell this. The Super Furry Animals like so many bands around them, have been influenced by the 1970's, only this time instead of black funk, Bowie, Bolan and the like being the influence, we get images of Hawkwind, Lindesfarne, Crosby Stills and Nash, and dare I suggest, some mindless Status Quo boogie in places! These influences are weaved in between a contemporary harder modern edge, and electronic noise bleeps, squeeks, bells and whistles to give an almost unique blend. Even the CD cover, with its skull with gold tooth, surrounded by lightening, and orange, turquoise, red, and blue lines shout "MODERN", but also of an earlier, Hawkwind age!


Highlights on ths album includes the tracks:


"Sidewalk Surfer Girl", reminicient of the Super Furrys old old - crashing guitars, funky producing, and that Beach Boys harmony.


"(Drawing) Rings Around The World", well, this is a boogie version of Silver Machine, with a 60'
s surfin@ chorus!, and I have to say, its just what the world needs right now! This is serious quality pop, especially with the samples of voices and noises at the end. Pure inspired.


"Receptacle For The Respectable", bitter lyrics encased in a bouncy frame - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Animals perhaps - the song bounces along til we reach an intense finality of the song title being chanted, with a heavy beat backing.


"Juxtapozed With U", the hit, the almost motown sound, and that irritating voice sound effect (boys, remember where you heard this first... Mr Blue Sky, by ELO, and more recently by Cher - These are not people to emulate... its not good, its not clever!)


"Presidental Suite", a calm tale of the futility of the fame of politicians and their private lives which hit the news more than their politics "Another Cuban Cigar Crisis", indeed!



I have to admire artists who always try to achieve something new - like Piscasso, who over the decades tried his hand to new arts (pottery, prints, litographs), those musicians who stretch their talents, always gain my admiration. The Super Furry Animals have such a following (smallish but devoted), that they could meander in the same vein for decades, earning a comfortable living. However, with "Rings Around The World", they have really stuck their necks out.


It will be most interesting to see how they develop next, I suspect the next album may prove to be this bands REAL masterpiece.

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