Super Furry Animals review: Welsh wonder band impress at Olympia in Dublin
Super Furry Animals at the Olympia in Dublin.
★★★★☆
With respect to Manic Street Preachers or even Badfinger, Super Furry Animals are the finest band the proud nation of Wales has yet produced. Their 1996 debut may have coincided with Britpop, but it and the superb run of records that followed brimmed with eclectic pop imagination far beyond anything from the other side of Offa’s Dyke.
Given their decade-long hiatus, tickets for Wednesday’s Supacabra tour opening night were as rare as the proverbial Welsh bit, although half of Wales seemed to be in if the accents in the bar were anything to go by.
SFA gave them, and everyone else, what they were after in a show that mixed some of the finest singles known to man with the joyful weirdness that helped make them so special in the first place.
While there was slight signs of rust after the lengthy layoff – backing vocals were buried or non-existent until halfway and the guitar got a bit confused in – there’s no arguing with a setlist housing the bubble and gurgle of complete with oversized plastic Nokia-shaped prop, the glam stomp of and the FM smooth verses of
The back screen projections burst into technicolour for the gorgeous (“I’m a minger, you’re a minger too”) and the brass and steel drums of and we got the only bit of audience address, apart from the odd “OK?”, when front man Gruff Rhys prefaced with the word “Dublin”.
In between the hits, things got even more interesting. – imagine the 1970s’ Beach Boys came from Cardiff – was proudly sung in their native tongue, much to the delight of our visiting Cymraeg cousins. Rhys then outdid himself during by munching celery into the microphone just as one Paul McCartney did on their 2001 masterpiece echoing Macca’s similar turn on the Beach Boys’ s in 1967, because all this madness is connected.
With its one-note solo and guitar necks crossed in the air, that would have been the highlight if it wasn’t for at the end.
If you doubt SFA’s genius then name another band who could sample a Steely Dan line ( ) and forge one of the great rock songs of 1990s around it. The sound descended into a swirl of electronics and the band remerged in mutant Womble/Wookie costumes to hammer it into submission.
Gruff brought out a neon sign calling for applause but it was hardly necessary. One of the best bands of the last thirty years – from anywhere – are back, pushing psychedelia with punk power. Cosmic.
