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Avg: 4.0 (178 ratings)
- Date Released: April 21, 2009
- Genre: Alternative/Punk
- Label: Rough Trade / Beggars Group
The Super Furry Animals return from hibernation with another brilliantly daft dispatch
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We Say...
Various side projects have absorbed SFA's members since 2007's Hey Venus album. Gruff Rhys made a typically eccentric concept record about John DeLorean with electronica outfit Neon Neon, while Dafydd Leuan and Guto Pryce made music with The Peth, the band they helm with Welsh actor Rhys Ifans.
A change is as good as a rest, they say, and this time away from each other has done SFA good. On DD/LY, they sound refreshed from their various sabbaticals, returning to their day-jobs with tangible energy and appetite. Big on Krautrock, psychedelic sounds and layered vocal harmonies, the album also packs in impressionistic epics ("Cardiff In The Sun"), glam-rock grooves and musique concrete (witness the denouement of "Pric").
Their famous eccentricity is also much in evidence: "The Very Best Of Neil Diamond" concerns a cassette of said songwriter's "Sweet Caroline" that can be heard emanating from the rubble of a ruined city, while opener "Crazy Naked Girls" is an orgy of fuzzed-up riffage in which Rhys councils: "Lovers' tiff? / Don't slit the wrist."
By the time Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand drops by to add frivolous German dialogue to the spry, fundamentally daft "Inaugural Trams", SFA have again proved themselves entertainers par excellence. Great music always requires a flight of the imagination, but SFA journey further — and higher — than most. -
They Say...
Longtime Super Furry Animals album artist Pete Fowler collaborated with Keiichi Tanaami, the designer responsible for their 2007 album Hey Venus!, for the cover art for SFA's ninth album, Dark Days/Light Years, and it's a fitting gesture for an album that connects the focused, revitalized band of the late 2000s with the renegades of the late '90s. A cursory listen reveals Dark Days to be considerably wilder than Hey Venus!, whose primary charm was its streamlined efficiency, showcasing the band at its tight, melodic best. Elements of this remain -- it's hard to strip the Day-Glo pop out of SFA, and they do not deny themselves, or us, this candied pleasure -- but the opener, "Crazy Naked Ladies," makes it plain that this is a buoyant, electrified, psychedelic affair, as much about texture as it is about sound. In that sense, it has a kindred spirit in Guerrilla, the third album that found SFA getting elastically electronic instead of precisely pop, but if anything, the group's two sides are integrated seamlessly here with the band shifting gears almost imperceptibly, transitioning smoothly from fuzz-flaked guitars to pulsating electro beats. This liquid ease distinguishes Dark Days/Light Years as latter-day SFA, as does their continued reliance on showcasing each of their main singer/songwriters, giving this a bit of a democratic heft, but SFA avoid any of the respectable middlebrow bloat that taints the worthy Rings Around the World period. Dark Days is vibrant and alive, an ever-flowing, ever-shifting, carousel of sound -- some might miss the emphasis on song, but it's a ride that's hard to resist.
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| 01. |  |
Crazy Naked Girls |
6:16 |
|
| 02. | |
Mt |
4:25 |
|
| 03. | |
Moped Eyes |
4:13 |
|
| 04. | |
Inaugural Trams |
5:20 |
|
| 05. | |
Inconvenience |
3:43 |
|
| 06. | |
Cardiff In The Sun |
8:16 |
|
| 07. | |
The Very Best Of Neil Diamond |
4:14 |
|
| 08. | |
Helium Hearts |
2:50 |
|
| 09. | |
White Socks/Flip Flops |
5:10 |
|
| 10. | |
Where Do You Wanna Go? |
2:28 |
|
| 11. | |
Lliwiau Llachar |
3:13 |
|
| 12. | |
Pric |
9:53 |
|
12 Total Tracks, 60:01 Total Length
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Credits
- Super Furry Animals - Producer // Huw Bunford - Performer // Dafydd Ieuan - Performer // Cian Ciárán - Performer // Guto Pryce - Performer // Gruff Rhys - Performer // Stuart Hawkes - Mastering // Dave Newfeld - Engineer // Peter Fowler - Artwork // Chris Shaw - Producer // Chris Shaw - Engineer // Chris Shaw - Mixing // Nick McCarthy - Spoken Word // Kris Jenkins - Percussion // Keiichi Tanaami - Artwork
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