Hermann Loves Pauline – Super Furry Animals (1997, Creation Records, Taken from ‘Radiator)
The “STOP” command isn’t just shouted at an annoying loud level this morning, it is sung, because its owner, my eleven year old daughter went to the theatre last night to see a musical and there is a tiny possibility that she really might have enjoyed it.
The theatre trip was part of a birthday party for her friend S, who turned eleven at the start of September, but that coincided with an exam, then some sickness, then half term and then a school trip, so it is a long delayed birthday celebration took place last night. She also had pizza which has now, I am told with enthusiasm, replaced pasta as her favourite food.
As the “STOP” command is sung, high pitched and in the style of “Billy Eyelash” (her words so please forgive the awful joke but that is apparently what she and her friends call Ms Eilish) the finger of fate is hovering on the spine of ‘Hermann Loves Pauline’ the distinctly unsingle like sixth single by Welsh wonders Super Furry Animals.
I tell my daughter that this song is a history lesson in disguise, in that it talks about the parents of Albert Einstein (who were the Hermann and Pauline in the song title) and that it also mentions asthma and the South America revolutionary Ernesto Guevera. I also tell her to listen out for the wonderful French Bread gag and the references to the fact that Marie Curie invented radiography.
The twelve inch is like nearly all of my early Super Furry Animal records a promo. It is a one sided 12 inch in a plain black sleeve, which means us DJs missed out the B Sides and the excellent Pete Fowler artwork that accompanied the proper release.
Here are the B sides just in case you want to hear them.
Calimero – Super Fury Animals (1997, Creation Records)
Trôns Mr Urdd – Super Furry Animals (1997, Creation Records) – I have no idea what this means in English, but I have a feeling that this track also featured on the ‘Mwng’ the Welsh language album that the band released a short while after ‘Radiator’.
It’s lack of radio appeal made ‘Hermann Loves Pauline’ perhaps a rather odd choice for a comeback single, but this is the Super Furry Animals and that is exactly what they did. ‘Hermann Loves Pauline’ was the first song to be released from the bands second album ‘Radiator’ and it hinted at an album that was distancing itself from both Britpop and majestic indie pop that came with ‘Fuzzy Logic’. Later releases from the album included the much more radio friendly country indie stomper ‘Demons’ and the more indie pop centric ‘Play It Cool’ both of which sit a few records away from where the finger of fate stopped today.
Here’s ‘Demons’ – again this is on twelve inch promo, one side, it has a cartoon dinosaur in the middle of the record.
Demons – Super Furry Animals (1997, Creation Records)
I tell my daughter that the Super Furry Animals were an excellent band, one that you could rely on to always be brilliant and a band who you never quite knew what to expect from, particularly as they took a bright blue tank on tour with them that blasted out techno music loud enough to wake the dead every night.
Here, for those of you who are waiting for it, is my daughters No More Than Five Words Review
“Funny French bread joke”
She then asks me if I have heard of the singer Bess Atwell, who I have heard of but only because Six Music played her the other day whilst I was taking some nails out of the fence. Apparently she is recommending her to you all – largely I suspect because her friends big sister was listening to her last week but a recommendation is a recommendation. I’ll try and squeeze some more out of her for next week.
Time Comes in Roses – Bess Atwell (2021, Daptone Records) – which is you know quite good.