The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
Adult  |  Moonsigns  |  Band Guide  |  Blogs  |  In Pictures
 
Best-vote-2010

Super Furry Animals | Dark Days / Light Years

Rough Trade (2009)
By ZETH LUNDY  |  March 30, 2009
4.0 4.0 Stars
090403_Super_m

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 >
  • Share:
  • Share this entry with Facebook
  • Share this entry with Digg
  • Share this entry with Delicious
  • RSS feed
  • Email this article to a friend
  • Print this article
1 Comments / Add Comment

mooney

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!

Posted: March 30 2009 at 11:52 PM
HTML Prohibited
Add Comment

ARTICLES BY ZETH LUNDY
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   GORILLAZ | PLASTIC BEACH  |  March 16, 2010
    Although this is their first album without an indie-chic producer, the fake band with fake cartoon characters known as Gorillaz stay the course as a very real post-Blur conduit for Damon Albarn's quasi-apocalyptic, '80s-daydreaming, neon-pop habit.
  •   BROKEN BELLS | BROKEN BELLS  |  March 09, 2010
    Danger Mouse ( né Brian Burton) had a pretty good run through the '00s, a decade that saw him go from a mash-up nobody to producer du jour for a motley assortment of artists.
  •   JIMI HENDRIX | VALLEYS OF NEPTUNE  |  March 03, 2010
    The Imaginary Hendrix Vault boasts so many hypothetical treasures.
  •   FIELD MUSIC | FIELD MUSIC (MEASURE)  |  February 16, 2010
    It takes some serious balls to release a double album in an age when Peter Gabriel would rather go bald than wear a fox pelt on his head.
  •   FELA KUTI | THE ’69 L.A. SESSIONS  |  February 09, 2010
    Amiri Baraka put it best in his poem "In the Funk World": "If Elvis Presley is King/Who is James Brown, God?" So, by that logic, is Fela Anikulapo Kuti higher than or equal to God?

 See all articles by: ZETH LUNDY

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed 



  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
thePhoenix.com:
Phoenix Media/Communications Group:
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
Copyright © 2010 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group