Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years

When the weird people of space-year 2109 look back on the canon of Super Furry Animals albums, it will appear as run of unmitigated success. Album after album of mellow psychedelia, fuzzed-up rock and jaunts out into the outer reaches of techno, hip-hop and funk.

From our perspective, however, the past few years have been a bit of a fallow period in Furryland. ‘Love Kraft’ and ‘Hey Venus’ had the air of a band falling into routine. They were fine, sure, but it felt as if some of the joy had gone.

Happily, ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ - the band’s ninth album - has joy in abundance. It’s the best thing they’ve recorded in years. It’s possibly the best thing they’ve recorded ever. And I’m not just saying that because there’s a song on it called ‘The Very Best of Neil Diamond’.? ?

Frontman Gruff Rhys promised an upbeat, “speaker-blowing” record, with all traces of country-balladry stripped away. And blimey, he wasn’t kidding. Opener ‘Crazy Naked Girls’ is all hysterically OTT guitar and howled vocals. There’s stomping glam attitude on ‘Inconvenience’ and the shimmering epic ‘Cardiff In The Sun’ builds to a blissful climax that recalls Beck’s recent ‘Chemtrails’.

Then there’s ‘Inaugural Trams’. Oh, ‘Inaugural Trams’, words cannot express how much I love thee. Both a sweet love song and an ode to public transport, it also features Nick McCarthy from Franz Ferdinand rapping in German. It may sound a little like something from Flight of the Conchords, but it’s the purest pop moment on the record.

‘Dark Days/Light Years’ finds the Furries at a slightly odd point in their career. Solo albums have begun to bud off (most fruitfully Gruff’s collaboration with Boom Bip, Neon Neon) and while their profile is still high, they’re unlikely to ever really cross over into the mainstream. Middle age has set in. Traditionally, it would be around about now that a band’s powers started to wane.

But like Radiohead’s incredible bounce-back with ‘In Rainbows’, the Furries have returned reenergised. Beautiful, funny, moving and silly in equal measure, ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ plays like a distillation of the best bits from nearly twenty years of Furry madness.