SFA OK again
293 wordsJV joined me on a jolly outing to the Birmingham Academy to see the Super Furry Animals. He brought some cans of high quality lager for the train journey up, which was nice.
El Goodo provided support. They had something of an identity problem, in that some of their songs sounded like The Las, some sounded like the Beatles in go-on-let-Ringo-have-a-go Octopus’ Garden mode, etc. They thoroughly redeemed themselves in my eyes, in their seething, growing, completely falling apart then suddenly snapping back into the groove, last song.
SFA concentrated on songs from the new album for the first half of their show, leading me to have to defend them when the bloke next to me at the urinals said they were playing nothing but rubbish. Of course, they moved on to the classics and polished off with TMDGAF as always.
The atmosphere wasn’t quite as great as the Coventry gig, with its combination of die-hard fans and Coventry residents just grateful for a visit from a big name band. The band didn’t do a great deal to prove to me that they were making music there and then: for example the massed “girlie choir” remained in “Zoom!”, but since there wasn’t a massed choir on stage, either part of the song was a recording or this was a keyboard sound.
We learned that each of the three sections of “Cloudberries” has its own title. The first section is called “Hummingbird”, and Gruff Rhys observed that this was the former name of the building we were standing in — which brought back some memories.
As TMDGAF broke down into a Joey Beltram techno workout, we rushed for the station, not sure whether we had missed the last train home. In the event we had 20 minutes to spare.