The Super Furry Animals have established themselves as probably the most innovative and eclectic pop group in the land. They once described themselves as “this bulging object, going all directions at once”. It’s a pretty accurate summation of a band equally at home playing warm, West Coast pop or tense, cutting-edge techno — and more usually slapping them both in the same song, along with some 1970s soft rock, a smidgen of country and a string arrangement in an obscure scale.
On their new album, Love Kraft, the Furries share out the songwriting duties more widely than ever among the band members and yet, oddly, it turns out to be their most consistent and cohesive work yet. This may seem counter- intuitive, but it makes sense to the Furries, as the singer, Gruff Rhys, and guitarist, Huw Bunford, explained when I met them over breakfast in a Soho café. “We had to choose the songs more carefully,” says Rhys. “We had 40 or 50 demos. There could have been three albums. We weren’t sure how it would work with different singers, so we worked harder to get continuity in the overall sound.”
“Because there are four songwriters and four singers, we had to choose the ones that fitted together,” adds Bunford. (The drummer, Dafydd Ieuan, and keyboard player, Cian Ciaran, also contribute songs to the album; bassist Guto Pryce doesn’t.) “The only way to get a homogenous sound was to record the more mellow songs. Usually, we stylise songs in a particular way — making each one different. This time, we kept them similar. We left a lot of fast, short pop songs off. It gives the record its own personality.”
Another factor that may have contributed to Love Kraft’s mellow, summery sound was the mellow, summery way it was recorded. When the band finished their last album, Phantom Power, they asked the Beastie Boys collaborator Mario Caldato to mix it. This time round, when they asked him to come over and produce Love Kraft, he refused; not because he didn’t like the band — he just couldn’t stand the weather.
“After mixing Phantom Power in Elephant and Castle in February, he got all depressed,” says Rhys. “He’s a Brazilian who’s spent much of his life in Los Angeles and does most of his work there. We couldn’t afford to work in LA. So we put all our gear on a lorry and took it down to Catalonia and recorded the album in immense heat there last June. We planned the release date around what’s supposed to be the next heat wave, so it’ll make more sense.”
Caldato influenced more than just the location of the recording. Rhys remembers: “He locked me in a room and forced me to watch Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii to try and make me overcome my Floyd phobia.” Despite his claim that “I came out in a rash” as a result of this amateurish therapy, the band were happy — after working alone on the tapes for a while at their Cardiff studio — to rejoin Caldato to mix the album in Rio.
For years, the band used to end their gigs with a sample of Bill Hicks’ famous dictum: “All governments are liars and murderers”. Typically, now that there’s more evidence than ever of this, they’ve turned their attention away from politics and back to love and relationships (although, admittedly, there are also songs about aliens arriving from outer space and about chickens crossing the road). As ever with the Furries, only a fool would try and pin down the exact meaning of any song. Their distinctly nonlinear nature is explained by Rhys: “When we’re in the studio, we cover all the walls with paper, write down any passing thoughts or ideas, or cut out bits from newspapers, and if anyone’s missing a line from a lyric they can look at this mess on the wall.”
Musically, the band’s oft-cited debt to the Beach Boys remains in evidence. On their recent Under the Influence compilation, the Furries included that band’s track Feel Flows, and here they sample its distinctive keyboard opening on Atomic Lust. “I think that the Under the Influence album gives people a glimpse into the magic, the chemistry that makes the Super Furry Animals,” says Rhys, laughing. “We’ve been called the Beach Boys on acid, but the Beach Boys were on acid.”
“Yeah, get your facts right,” Bunford chips in. “All those soft-rockers were drug-crazed lunatics.”
Bunford’s songs on Love Kraft are the most upbeat. The Horn is an addictive mix of Brian Eno, Ronnie Lane and sea shanty; Back on a Roll is an unashamed “life on the road” song, with a choogling backing that could almost be Fleetwood Mac. “I think my songs on this album are like when you go to a party and you turn up in fancy dress and you realise that, actually, it’s a black-tie affair.”
The Furries are well known for the bizarre visual presentation of their music. On their last tour, they dressed as yetis; earlier in their career, they used to ride round festival sites in a tank. “After the tank, we did have pretensions of buying an aircraft carrier,” says Rhys, “but we’re still waiting for that one big royalty cheque. We’ve scaled down our ambitions to a submarine.”
As we talk, some creative accounting suddenly makes the submarine — maybe even the aircraft carrier — seem more attainable. Military vehicles, it turns out, are not a cost, they’re an investment. “The tank paid its way — retained its value,” says Rhys. The band, weirdly, sold it to Don Henley of the Eagles, who is a collector. “I think the tank worked out cheaper than a poster campaign,” adds Bunford. “There must be some cheap submarines knocking about. We’ll get our top men on it.”
While they scour the seas for a suitable vehicle, they do have an interim means of transport — a golf cart — which they have used to drive onto stage at festivals. “I don’t think you can ride one round Nottingham’s Rock City, though,” muses Rhys. “We need to fill arenas.”
But the Furries have more important priorities than filling arenas. I realise this as the interview ends and I get up to leave. Rhys stands up, raises both thumbs aloft, smiles and says quietly (he says everything quietly): “Ten years, and we’re still going.” A man who could justifiably wallow in the torrent of critical admiration unleashed on his band in the past decade chooses instead to be most proud of the simple fact that he and his friends have kept the band together. It’s a down-to-earth, ego-free attitude that many musicians with a fraction of the Furries’ talent could learn from.
Love Kraft is out on August 22
