The Welsh band hit the nostalgia trail playing their albums Fuzzy Logic and Radiator in full...
'Tis the season for bands on 20th anniversary nostalgia tours. Ash are currently going around the country playing 1977 while Kula Shaker are reminding everyone that they still exist by performing their debut K. Super Furry Animals are also celebrating 20 years since the release of their first album, Fuzzy Logic, and the subsequent tour brings them to Rock City. As a bonus, they also play the entirety of their second album, Radiator, as well.
Walking on to the stage wearing white boiler suits, Super Furry Animals launch straight into the glam-punk God! Show Me Magic, side A, track 1 from Fuzzy Logic. Even 20 years on, the opening couplet "I had a soul transplant operation/Because my bypass didn't function" still sounds fresh. The whole album still sounds good and the benefit of playing a LP in order gives the set a much better balance than a greatest hits show often has.
The four singles get the best reactions but it's clear that everyone in the crowd has their favourites from the album tracks whether it's Fuzzy Birds, a song about Gruff powering his house by connecting a generator to his hamster's wheel to Mario Man with its tale of getting a hole-y shell suit stitched up by a surgeon in Everton. Bad Behaviour also gets the crown bouncing around.
Following a couple of minutes of applause for Howard Marks, who sadly passed away earlier this year, another victim of the curse of 2016, the band come back on to perform Radiator. Opening instrumental Furryvision doesn't quite get the band going after the break and it takes until the third song The International Language Of Screaming for the crowd to really get buzzing again.
Radiator has more depth and nuance than its predecessor and as Gruff points out, the last four tracks, Bass Tuned To DEAD, Down A Different River, Download and Mountain People are pretty dark. Especially considering that they come after a song in Welsh about magic scissors.
What is amazing is that they manage to recreate the songs from these two albums live augmented only by a trumpet player. It's tremendous when you look at how complicated some of the arrangements are and the challenge really seems to have brought the best out in the band.
They close the show with an amazing The Man Don't Give A Fuck and the crowd absolutely lose it. As the song is stretched out, keyboardist Cian Ciaran is left on-stage on his own. The rest of the band return five minutes later dressed as yetis to finish the song and end the evening on a real high.
It was great to hear these songs played live, some of which haven't been played for a very long time, if ever. Hopefully, we'll see the Furries returning to the studio rather than staying on the nostalgia merry-go-round (although apparently even Kula Shaker were playing new tracks at their gigs and I really don't think the world needs that). So, a brilliant gig but with a bit of luck the Super Furry Animals will soon be back with a tour promoting a new album.
Super Furry Animals were at Rock City on Friday 16 December 2016.
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