Super Furry Animals

Light Days / Dark Nights

(Rough Trade)

Record Review by Kevan Peterson

Super Furry Animals continue on with their '60s-inspired psychedelic pop rock, weaving spacey guitars, melodic vocals and tricked out effects to create Dark Days / Light Years, their thirteenth release in thirteen years, if you include their EPs.  The opening track, “Cardiff in the Sun,” has vocals distorted beyond recognition, but because Super Furry Animals have been doing this with their music for so long, it works masterfully. 

Bringing you back out of the clouds, “Crazy Naked Girls” opens with some chatter and then centers around a solid drum track and low level guitar, which culminates into a Hendrix-influenced guitar solo, bringing you the best sounds marijuana can buy.  “Helium Hearts,” the album's third track, replaces distorted vocals with a clear vocal track and psycadelic guitars with synthesisers, giving the illusion you just jumped a decade or two in history. 

“Inaugural Tram” fuses the two vocal styles together, mixing distorted vocals with clear ones, layered over an '80s-style pop track, even going so far as to feature a German vocal breakdown mid-song.  Now that is pop music.  “Inconvenience” melds into the track list like a missing puzzle piece, coming out as possibly the catchiest track on the album, as it trades in most of the psychedelic influence for easily singable lyrics and danceable beats. 

“Lliwiau Llachar” sounds like The Beach Boys if they had gone through a Sgt. Pepper period, using layered backing vocals that fall under the often underused category of Great Songs for a Psychedelic Day at the Beach.  The album continues showing its era-shifting influences with “Moped Eyes,” landing squarely back in the '80s, using lyrics that make little sense but sound great, such as “I can see through your lies, cause you’ve got moped eyes,” sounding like it was spawned from the same decade that brought such classics as “Walk Like an Egyptian” and "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades."

“Mountain” sounds the most modern, using both synthesized strings and bluesy riffs to create a lush musical landscape.  “Pric” uses fuzzed out guitars and a driving bass line to sink its teeth back into the sound Super Furry Animals is best known for, going on an eight minute trip to dream land.  The album continues on this sleepy path until it reaches its closer, “White Socks / Flip Flops,” which relies on rough guitar and a dry back beat to bring the album home. 

Dark Days / Light Years finds the band living up to their name with Super music, Furry feelings and Animal-like instincts.  This band is not at your local zoo, but you may find it on the open range of most record store shelves.