Super Furry Animals
3Olympia Theatre, Dublin
★★★★☆
It’s been 10 years since Super Furry Animals last performed live, and in that decade the world has gone to hell in a handcart. Is there a correlation? Perhaps not, but it’s a welcome tonic to see the Welsh band back on stage sending their woozy indie-prog-psychedelectronica sounds out into the ether once again.
This is the first show of their six-date Supacabra tour of Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, and marks 30 years since the release of their debut album, Fuzzy Logic. When they announced their comeback tour last year, they also reissued a 20th anniversary edition of Love Kraft, their last album on a major label.
The line-up is unchanged from the Fuzzy Logic days: lead singer and guitarist Gruff Rhys, lead guitarist Huw Bunford, bassist Guto Pryce, keyboard player Cian Ciarán and drummer Dafydd Ieuan. What I didn’t know was that this was not the original line-up: an up-and-coming actor named Rhys Ifans was their lead singer before Hollywood beckoned. A sliding doors moment, for sure.
The Furries make a measured entrance for their first show in 10 years, Ciarán laying an electronic bedrock for the opening track Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home), and Rhys doing his best Dom Joly impression with a giant inflatable mobile phone. This segues nicely into (Drawing) Rings Around the World, the band’s paean to global (dis) connection.
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There’s little in the way of theatrics on show: the band didn’t bring their tank (they sold that to Don Felder from The Eagles a few years ago) and they’re not wearing matching boiler suits. It’s left to the tunes to carry the show, and there’s no shortage of great songs in the band’s nine-album back catalogue – all they have to do is squeeze as many of them as possible into this two-hour extravaganza.
The urgent Do or Die and the lumbering Golden Retriever are followed by the druggy anthem Something 4 the Weekend, the prog-psychedelia of Focus Pocus/Debiel and the mutually assured If You Don’t Want Me to Destroy You. By the time we get to the coda of Ice Hockey Hair, the gig is locked in, and the outcome is preordained.
And the minor hits just keep coming: Hello Sunshine, Northern Lites, Juxtaposed With U and Fire in My Heart. All infectious as hell, none of them troubling the upper reaches of the pop charts. And there’s the Welsh-language song, so catchy you’ll sing along with it even if you don’t understand the language.
In between the catchy alternative classics are extended exercises in musical exploration, such as the mind-blowing Run! Christian, Run! the propulsive Slow Life and the prog-folk landscape of Mountain People.
But the Furries haven’t abandoned the theatrics altogether, with Rhys donning his lizard-head helmet for the penultimate track, Night Vision, and holding aloft an electronic signboard that simply reads “GRMA” (go raibh maith agaibh) before Ciarán cranks up the electronics for the finale of The Man Don’t Give a F**k.
The band exit the stage, leaving Ciarán to wind things down, but they’re not done yet, returning in their trademark yeti costumes to delight the fans even more and finish off with an expletive-laden reprise. The band are back in Dublin for a show in Collins Barracks on August 30th, with Baxter Dury.
