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CD Reviews

Super Furry Animals | Dark Days / Light Years

Rough Trade (2009)

By ZETH LUNDY | March 30, 2009

4.0 Stars

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.

Gorillaz | Plastic Beach
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.
The Peth | The Golden Mile
Rock drummers, like lumberjacks and insult comics, aren’t known for subtlety, as we typically observe from their solo albums and side projects.
Various Artists | A Psychedelic Guide to Monsterism Island
Artist, graphic designer, and toy creator Pete Fowler has been instrumental in the rebranding operation the Super Furry Animals have effected on their homeland of Wales.
The Flaming Lips | Embryonic
If new albums by Super Furry Animals, 50 Foot Wave, and the Flaming Lips are any indication, 2009 is smack in the middle of a new psychedelic age.
Henry Threadgill Zooid | This Brings Us To, Volume 1
Henry Threadgill has been reinventing his language — and by extension the jazz language — for at least 30 years, beginning with the trio Air in the 1970s.
Mostly Other People Do the Killing | Forty Fort
On their fourth CD, the celebrated young jazz quartet with the indie-rock name continue their audacious updating of the genre's old-school avant-garde.
John Heartsman | Music Of My Heart
John Heartsman's career had two modest peaks.
Into the groove
The 2010 Best Music Poll nominees announcement is fast approaching, but we do know all of the '09 victors will return to defend their titles, including jazz/funk reigning champs Funkatronic, who are looking for a three-peat.
Nightwatch
Who's got the funk?
Grupo Fantasma
"When you come to our show, you gotta dance. You dance however you want to dance."
Fat Worm of Error: Windsong On Our Own Mind
The air downstairs at the Milky Way was a thick soup of body funk — the kind of stale coloration that a T-shirt stuck at the bottom of a pile of laundry tends to achieve after a few weeks.
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Topics: CD Reviews , Neil Diamond, Super Furry Animals, Super Furry Animals, More

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