Tag Archives: super furry animals

#637: Super Furry Animals – The International Language of Screaming

Super Furry Animals are known to have one of the most solid discographies for a British rock group. In about late 2014 I made it a goal to go through it from their debut Fuzzy Logic to whatever their most recent album was at the time. I only made it to their second album. Guerrilla I had already listened to years prior. I gave up on that task very quickly. But now I knew three albums by SFA. Radiator is the band’s second album, released in 1997, and is where you can find today’s song tucked in near the beginning of the record.

If you’ve listened to Radiator from front to back, you’ll know that the track follows ‘The Placid Casual’ which is very keyboard-led, Gruff Rhy’s vocals are packed in the middle and the drums crash with a vengeance. On ‘Screaming’ almost all the instruments are packed in the centre, with Rhy’s vocals separated in the left and right with very open guitars. It makes a great contrast, and is a great one-two punch at the start of the album.

‘The International Language of Screaming’ was released as the album’s second single way back when. It lasts for only two minutes and fifteen seconds but is packed with a lot of elements that make it very enjoyable and hard to forget. The main vocal melody almost never changes throughout the thing, and I’ve also like how it rises and rises before dropping down again and returning back to its beginning again. There are these weird wailing/cooing noises that I’ve only began to hear that surround all the music. But at the base of it are these overdriven guitars that lead the track along. I feel this track is just about boredom with life. Becoming stagnant at some point and needing to way to break out of the funk. Singer Gruff Rhys finds that the best way to do this is by screaming, which he obliges to do as the final choruses repeat and the song finishes with a soundscape of swirling electronic noises.

My iPod #422: Super Furry Animals – The Gift That Keeps Giving

“The Gift That Keeps Giving” is a song by Welsh band Super Furry Animals “conceived as a Christmas single” and eventually released as one on Christmas Day in 2007. It was also the final single to be released from their then most recent album Hey Venus!, their eighth overall.

Although all this time has passed, I have never got round to listening to the album. But “Gift” remains as my constant reminder of why I should one day, never mind the fact that the band’s whole discography is one of the most consistent by any group. I remember its music video being repeated again and again during the festive period on MTV2… it doesn’t quite match up to the tracks joyous message. But it still did its job of getting inside my head because of how warm and homely it sounded.

A track of a steady tempo with beautiful vocal harmonies and rich instrumentation, “The Gift That Keeps Giving” maintains a comfortable groove and infectious melody resulting in one of the band’s most mellow and yet enjoyable pieces of work.

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

 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


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.