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Super Furry Animals | Dark Days / Light Years

Rough Trade (2009)
By ZETH LUNDY  |  March 30, 2009
4.0 4.0 Stars
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What better way to say hwyl! to this ponderous decade than with a hulking slab of psych jams from one of its most consistent and chameleonic bands? For their ninth studio album, the Welsh quintet go heavy on vamps, riffs, and refrains; the result is their most spontaneous and blissfully lax effort since 2000's Mwng.

With most band members contributing heavily on lead and backing vocals, Dark Days/Light Years just might be SFA's most inclusive release ever. The songs, which evolved out of improvisations over the past few years, dig into glam, krautrock, and Funkadelicky grooves. Some, like the Sabbath-esque "Crazy Naked Girls," are transcendentally dumb; others, like the eight-minute "Cardiff in the Sun," are mushroom-clouding brain food.

There's room inside all this stoned discipline for a German rap ("Inaugural Trams"), a miniature pop nugget ("Helium Hearts"), and an Indian-flavored digression that juxtaposes falling bombs with "Sweet Caroline" ("The Very Best of Neil Diamond"). For anyone who's found the band's previous few records too "safe," Dark Days/Light Years is a welcome and irreverent treat, a sustained platter of tightly wound crazy to be savored throughout the rest of this year, and into the infinite.
Related: The Peth | The Golden Mile, Various Artists | A Psychedelic Guide to Monsterism Island, The Flaming Lips | Embryonic, More more >
  Topics: CD Reviews , Neil Diamond, Super Furry Animals, Super Furry Animals,  More more >
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Comments
Re: Super Furry Animals | Dark Days / Light Years
A beautiful record from a true treasure of a band. I really can't think of another band, maybe the Flaming Lips, that is truly the vanguard of modern day psychedelic rock. They are carrying on what the Beatles couldn't finish. True genious stuff.  But I'm not ready to say this is the best since "Mwng"....The brilliance of "Rings Around the World" and "Phantom Power" is tough to match. They may have done it here, but I'm not ready to say it!
By mooney on 03/30/2009 at 11:52:56

[ 11/28 ]   Seth Shomes Band  @ Wolf Den @ Mohegan Sun
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