Six albums deep into their career, Super Furry Animals have world-built an entire mythology of Welsh mysticism, Beach Boys homages, and Pete Fowler's bubbly cartoons to such a point that slipping into Phantom Power comes as a comfortable, pleasant exercise. To some, comfortable may counted as a weakness-- for those who wear their bands like fashion, balling up inside Super Furry Animals' farmer-spun wool sweater won't compare to the Issey Miyake-esque bands peacocking down the runway in a loose web of spangles, layers of veneer, and sprigs of feathers. SFA are past forcing outwardly cool, past design and into craft. This is a warm album you'll want to hang in your closet for a damp day.
The third interior panel inside Phantom Power's liner notes shows a Fowler image of a tired, collapsing horse in burnt oranges and blues. It's a striking tribute to the cover of the Beach Boys' overlooked masterpiece Surf's Up; instead of the slumping Geronimo, a spectral wisp winds around the mare. Though Phantom Power takes its title from the Bush-trimming chrome-plated stomper "Out of Control"-- in reference to both a stormy zeitgeist and the U.S. leader's simultaneously world-threatening and vaporous personality-- it could just as easily reflect the spirits of American legends The Byrds and the Beach Boys which charge the album. This dichotomy is what makes the album so fascinating-- Super Furry Animals rail against the "gulf of misery" created by America (snowballing seas "painted red by bleeding army"), yet more than ever invest their efforts in honey-dipped California harmonies, Mississippi mud slide-guitars, and snapping Stax drumming. The record is living testament that our nation's greatest contribution to the world will be our music.
Super Furry Animals never settle into one mood here, and Phantom Power sees the down-to-earth Welsh band moving away from genre-hopping and rough juxtapositions, and beginning to blend their influences into an evenly spread melange that simply sounds like a highly evolved pop band. The final third recalls their wildest forays into world and electronic music, without sounding apart from the whole. "Valet Parking" runs bossa nova down an open autobahn. "The Undefeated" steals enough ketamine to finish off that Surf's Up horse, melts down, and gets crunk with hillbillies in the lost Black Ark studio before bursting with horns and, literally, machine guns. Before long, bouncing globes of synth have sprung into sweeping strings on the stunning closer, "Slow Life", before segueing into swirling technopop and back again.
But back to the beginning: "Liberty Belle" sees Gruff Rhys topping himself in pure songwriting with a simply lovely, brilliant song about, well, everything that's happening right now. The lyrics work so wonderfully in repeating geographic and avian themes, as Rhys sees birds' fight-or-flight defense mechanisms in cities around the world-- like seagulls suddenly taking to the sky in Abu Dabai-- as a warning cry to mounting global trouble. After repeatedly telling us we're "drowning in [our] oil wells," Rhys relates that imagery of birds fleeing trees in danger to ashes rising in New York City, past "the grimy clouds above New Jersey, past the kids who smoke like chimneys, to the sea." It's the most colorful, tragic, witty, and beautiful passage written about 9/11. In typical SFA fashion the next song is called, rather jokingly, "Sex, War, and Robots".
Upon first listen, "Venus & Serena" sounded like a ballad drawn from the resentment of two sisters forced by a conniving father from a young age to enter competitive tennis. After reading the liner notes, it turns out to be about a boy raised by wolves whose two closest friends were pet turtles. Go figure. But this is what makes Super Furry Animals so enjoyable-- you never get what you expect, and even then the results are layered musically, emotionally, and lyrically. This is the most richly melodic, inviting album they've recorded.
Gruff Rhys' voice doesn't have that to-the-back-of-the-arena power that so many angstful singers seem to rely on, which pushes him into more rewarding harmonies and melody, much like Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, who were never going to be confused with Sam Cooke, but still managed to write "Artificial Energy" and "Get to You". Like the Beach Boys, The Byrds were an ideal collective. And with other members singing on "Sex, War, and Robots" and the b-side "Blue Fruit", Super Furry Animals sound that way more than ever. In case you still doubt the connection, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, to which Phantom Power best compares, also features a horse on the cover.
The mythos of the American West remains a potent signifier for nostalgia, hardship, and bloodshed. Forty years ago this was best exhumed with cowboy iconography. These days it can be done musically through the two ultimate American West pop bands, and it's what Super Furry Animals are after. If Phantom Power sounds like a tame record to your ears in comparison to the Furries' past extroverted wackiness, dig between the mesas to find the bones, blood, and booze.
