It’s Monday, Let’s Swear – #17

The Man Don’t Give a Fuck – Super Furry Animals (1996, Creation Records)

As per yesterday, this is going to be the last sweary Monday track for a little while.  It has been a series which at times has been puerile (The Teenagers), downright disgusting (Azaliea Banks), thought provoking (Eels) and disturbing (Primal Scream) but has always started the week off with some decent swearing.

There is a reason for putting this series on hold.  All will be explained from next Monday, which if my maths is correct will be June 27^th.  Anyway before that let’s have one final good old swear.  ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’ was the inspiration to this series – well that and the entire back catalogue of Anal C____.  It is probably the finest sweary song in existence.

Around ten years ago, possibly longer, I was waiting for a bus in Exeter City Centre.  Across the road from the bus stop was a pedestrian area where a guy with a guitar, a small amp and a mike had been playing a few songs.  He wasn’t bad but he also wasn’t very good.  My bus appeared to be no in rush so I sat and watched the chap, about two minutes later a couple of security guards start talking to him, they are the security guards from the nearby posh jewellery shop and they seem to have taken offence at chappie’s second rate Beatles covers.  There is some finger pointing and chappie then just shrugs his shoulders and launches into ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash.  The guards walk off.  As soon as they have gone, chappie segues, not quite seamlessly into a verse of ‘The Man Don’t Give a Fuck’.  It is subvertly brilliant in a not very brilliant sort of way, and as my bus rolls in, almost perfectly timed, I nip over and shove a couple of quid in his hat. 

The Man Don’t Give A Fuck (Live) – Super Furry Animals (1996, Creation Records)

Jumpin’ Jack Flash –  The Rolling Stones (1968, Decca Records)

Nearly Perfect Albums – #24

Radiator – Super Furry Animals

Demons – Super Furry Animals (1997, Creation Records)

Is this the first record in this series that is on Creation Records?  I think it might be, it’s definitely not the last that much I do know (and I might do a whole month dedicated to Creation Records releases soon).  Anyway before that, let’s talk about ‘Radiator’ the brilliant, relentless second studio album from the Super Furry Animals.  It is an album that I think moves away from the strange slightly skewed version of Britpop that their first album ‘Fuzzy Logic’ delivered and is more an album steeped in experimental pop sounds and dalliances with some seriously distorted techno.  It is also an album brimming with confidence and exceptional lyrics.

None more so than in the single ‘Hermann loves Pauline’ which is essentially about Albert Einstein’s parents, but takes on an acid laden path via Ernesto Guevera and Marie Curie (“Ha, French BREAD!!)

Hermann Loves Pauline – Super Furry Animals (1997, Creation Records)

There are so many highlights on this record, you could of course just talk about the other singles on it, the swooping country brass tinged, smoke flavoured ballad that is ‘Demons’.  Or the wonderfully dysfunctional leftfield indie pop of ‘Play It Cool’.

If ‘Demons’ had been released in the Britpop era it would have catapulted the band from being ‘popular’ to instant megastars, only for the band to have driven all over that status in their bright blue techno tank a few months later.  

Wonderful as all that is, it is the last three songs on ‘Radiator’ that pushes it from being a simply brilliant album to one that is nearly perfect.  It is during these three songs that you see all the ideas that the band have blending together, ideas that seemingly grew into other songs for other albums.  The slow burning but brilliant ‘Down A Different River’ is a song that reflects on a cocaine misadventure, it blends lofi Americana with the merest hint of electronica and its utterly captivating

Down A Different River – Super Furry Animals (1997, Creation Records)

The album closes with a massive sing along, the chest puffing, fist raising epic that is ‘Mountain People’.  A song that if the Welsh Assembly had any sense, they would lobby whoever they need to in order to make it the Welsh National Anthem as soon as possible.  Although the musical breakdown at the end, which features all manner of electronic spluttering, relentless out of sorts drum beats and mangled bleeps, (all of it totally unexpected) might prove awkward at future sporting events. 

Mountain People – Super Furry Animals (1997, Creation Records)

Music Found in Charity Shops – #6

Rings Around the World – Super Furry Animals

Bought from British Heart Foundation – Newton Abbot for £1.99

Sadly, the CD didn’t also contain a copy of the interactive DVD that was also released at the same time as ‘Rings Around the World’.  That featured 13 specially made films each one accompanying one of the tracks on the album.  It was basically 60 minutes of space age nonsense, pot smoking lunacy and some explosions if memory serves me rightly.  Kind of like a Cheech and Chong movie for the 2000s. 

‘Rings Around the World’ is the bands fifth album, and as you would expect, none of it is conventional.  You get strings, Vocoder style vocals, electronic gizmo gadgets, digitalised drum beats, explosive guitars and techno blasts that sound a lot like the sort of noise that you would hear on Warp records. Take these two for instance

No Sympathy – Super Furry Animals (2001, Epic Records)

Juxtaposed with U – Super Furry Animals (2001, Epic Records)

‘No Sympathy’ clocks in at over seven minutes, during which Gruff Rhys tells us that somebody “deserves to die” over the backdrop of an acoustic guitar and some very gentle drums.  Then just as you think its going to end, it turns into a full on techno stomp.  Its marvellous.

Meanwhile, ‘Juxatopsed with U’ a single that we are all probably accustomed too by now, cleverly manages to fuse a wonderfully soppy ballad with Daft Punk style robot vocals and in doing so, creates an almost perfectly wonky pop song.

Its not all leftfield genius though, track five for instance is a baffling as it is irritating.  Its called ‘Receptacle for the Respectable’, which is a track that is crafted around the sound of Paul McCartney eating carrots and celery (and he is credited as such in the sleeve notes).  Macca would have been better off making a soup out of his carrots instead of wasting his time there.

Receptacle for the Respectable – Super Furry Animals (2001, Epic Records)

But the band save the best track until the very end, ‘Fragile Happiness’ which has fast become one of my favourite Super Furry Animals tracks, it short but devastatingly beautiful.  It contains no gizmo gadgets, no strings or digitalised drum beats, just a falsetto vocal and some whistling. 

Fragile Happiness – Super Furry Animals (2001, Epic Records)