Tag Archives: super furry animals

My iPod #301: Super Furry Animals – (Drawing) Rings Around the World

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 I’ve never listened to the “Rings Around the World” album; I should get to doing that sometime soon. I started listening to Super Furry Animals’ discography a few weeks ago, starting with “Fuzzy Logic” and then “Radiator“. Their albums seem to be the only ones from a band where all of them have been acclaimed by critics and stuff, so I wanted to see if they were actually that good. Those first two are. “Guerrilla” too. I’ll carry on listening to the others later.

“(Drawing) Rings Around the World” is the title track from Super Furry Animals’ 2001 album, the Welsh group’s first one on a major label. I’ve known this one for many years now. I saw the video on the television one time, and then completely forgot how the song actually sounded because I never saw it again until a few years later. It’s a cool one. The introduction builds up from a lone synthesizer, which is then gradually accompanied by the guitars, drums and eventually lead singer Gruff Rhys about communication and rings of TVs and satellites around the Earth.

Two minutes of the song is a coda which may be repetitive for some; I enjoy just ’cause the melody’s brilliant. Reminds me of that “Rockin’ All Over the World” song. Don’t really like Status Quo though.

My iPod #282: Super Furry Animals – Do or Die

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After coming downstairs in the early hours of the morning, switching on the television and changing it to MTV2, the video for “Do or Die” – the last single from “Guerrilla“, the third album by Welsh band Super Furry Animals – came on. It was over quickly because the song’s only two minutes long, but even afterwards I could slightly remember the melody of the chorus, even though I had no idea what Gruff Rhys was singing apart from the title phrase. That was in 2005 or so. I didn’t hear it again until roughly seven years later.

“Do or Die” wasn’t even supposed to be a single. Originally the band had chosen the album track “Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home)” for release, but the label meddled around and promoted “Die” instead. The band weren’t very pleased. I am though, “That’s My Home” annoys me a bit; it’s very repetitive and doesn’t really go anywhere. It one of those tracks that I think I would have liked when I was four, and then listened to it later on in life thinking “What was so good about this again?”.

The track’s cool, man. It’s got funny lyrics about riding camels and eating tomatoes and a simple, catchy riff that alternates between two chords. The track becomes louder and louder from the instrumental part onwards before coming to a complete stop whilst synthesizer noises carry on and eventually fade out.  Plus it has a really bubbly intro, helped along with those keyboards, that sounds like background music to the start of a Saturday morning children’s television show.