Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years

I've long loved the way that Gruff Rhys and fellow Super Furries completely unselfconciously make the unlikeliest of subjects seem like perfectly natural lyrical concerns. Gruff has outdone himself with first single from their new album "Inaugural Trams" [free mp3 from website], an excited bounce of a song that puts its love in terms of town planning, or possibly vice versa ('We could promenade down the infra-nasal depression/The streets of your hands will never know a recession') and has a repeated call of 'trams!' as its most virulent hook of many. It's difficult to imagine many other bands singing of triumphs like 'we have reduced emissions by seventy-five per cent' with such winning sincerity.

I mention a Gruff song first as it's perhaps not surprisingly the most instant joy of their ninth (!) album, but the key to Dark Days/Light Years' triumph is actually the decision to divide up vocal and songwriting duties among the band. Said division was probably a large part of what made their last two albums a relatively weak patch (i.e. merely really good) but it's now paying dividends big time as everyone hits their stride. Cian Ciaran's sweet and affectionate "Helium Hearts" and Huw Bunford's intricate yacht rock update "White Socks/Flip Flops", its unlikely steals from Moody Blues solo records included, are album highlights. At least I think that's whose they are as with only the digital release so far songwriting credits are unclear.

Anyway, the band has long revelled in stylistic diversity and the different voices present (both figuratively and literally) add yet another dimension to this. There's a range of languages too of course, with the blissful Welsh harmonising of "Lliwiau Llachar" and the just-brief-enough German rap that Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand tears into midway through "Inaugural Trams". The variation all flows together without pause thanks to some particularly neat sequencing. Almost every track wending its way totally logically to an end in a brief snatch of a completely different tune before the following begins from there - a sort of aural palate cleanser mechanism that is very effective.

Perhaps of necessity Dark Days/Light Years is quite a different beast from the major label opuses of Rings Around the World and Phantom Power, with a more pared down and direct sound than previously. Focussing on tighter grooves with a sprinkling of kraut-rock and recalling Guerrilla most of previous albums (the fuzzy, itchy guitars and unhinged vocals of "Crazy Naked Girls" are initially a dead ringer for "Night Vision") suits the current model of the band a lot more than the harmonic pop of Hey Venus! did, although more important is that such an overview no longer really gives a fair reflection of the scope and ambition at work.
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