(Super Furry) Animal magnetism wins the day

Sep 7 2007 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

Laura Davis meanders through the surreal experience of talking to the SFA’s lead guitarist, Huw Bunford

BEFORE we enter the weird and wonderful world of Huw Bunford, time for a health warning.

It’s not often that writers admit to their limits, but here’s mine – in no way can the real-life experience of conversing with the Super Furry Animals lead guitarist be adequately recreated on paper.

It just isn’t possible to convey the lengthy pauses or the apparently confused rambling that surrounds moments of wonderful lucidity and the sense that he is having a lovely time being as vague and confusing as he can.

So those who want to imagine what he’s really like to talk should add a few gaps, repetitions and wandering obscurely off the subject to what he says below.

"I think one or two songs are very atypical of SFA, but if I was introducing Super Furry Animals to an alien culture, I might take this album and go ‘they sound a bit like this’," Bunford says of the band’s new album Hey Venus!, which scored highest new entry in the UK album chart on Wednesday.

"It’s a sort of a pop album, that’s what we tried to do. It’s our shortest album and it has our shortest song in it as an introduction. It lasts 20 seconds.

"The album’s loosely based on the life of a girl called Venus who goes through possibly everyone’s experience of growing up, leaving home, going to the big metropolis and trying to find her feet there."

This concept is echoed in the psychedelic illustrations created for the album cover by Japanese pop- art pioneer Keiichi Tanaami.

Pete Fowler, the artist who created the memorable covers for SFA’s previous records, had committed himself to a 10-year collaboration with the Welsh group, which is now at an end.

His vivid illustrations, including a yellow pipe-smoking many-legged creature on the Guerrilla album of 1999, helped form the Indie band’s off-the-wall image and no doubt increased sales.

Having seen Tanaami’s work in pop art books, they avoided the whole agents speaking to agents thing and took a traditional route to asking for his input.

"There’s a guy called Keiichi Tanaami and he’s very old and he was an amazing pop artist in the ’60s," says Bunford.

"We wrote a letter saying that we were great fans of his and maybe he’d like to listen to our new album and make some drawings. He said yes and he came out with what is quite mental, it’s amazing what he obviously heard in the music.

"We’re really into artwork and the aestheticism of albums is very important really, so hopefully we haven’t disappointed anybody."

While writing this album, SFA realised they had enough material for a second and are planning to release this as a sequel to Venus’s story.

"We’ve written it but we don’t know if we’ll leave the songs as they are, I think we’ll probably go in and re-record some stuff. We’ve got a blueprint. It might sound a bit, er, pre-planned but it’s really an album that is a second installment of Venus’s life.

"When I say this is kind of a sequel, it’s loosely based on the character Venus. There’s a few songs that we’d written for this album that weren’t . . . er . . . short enough really or would have changed the feel of the album, but they still had a very strong connection with it."

In their own unusual way, SFA also have a third album on the go, this time an instrumental one which they are planning to release alongside a DVD.

And, never ones to do anything the way everyone else would, they appear to be working backwards.

"We wanted to do something that wasn’t traditionally making songs – this is the song, this is the lyrics, it goes like this, black or white – we haven’t really changed in the way we put an album together, so we wanted to try something that was much more experimental.

"It’s still early doors. We’re working with a man called Charles Hazlewood who is a conductor and an arranger called Costas (Foto- poulos). He works with Charles. They both sort of . . . er . . . are working on some musical themes and he’s got his own orchestra.

"Basically we’re trying to make a film and this is the beginning of the music."

So they came up with the soundtrack before the concept of the film? "Obviously – that’s how they make films," he laughs.

And do they know what it will be about? "No. We might make the ‘making of’ before the actual film. We’re basically doing it completely the wrong way round."

Of course, Bunford has no idea when the film will be completed – "Your guess is as good as mine but it won’t be next year."

It’s all about production for SFA, and as well as their eye-catching album covers, the four-piece has become well known for the extravagance of their stage sets – furry costumes, video screens and dramatic lighting.

So it may come as a bit of a surprise that they are planning a pared-down tour this time.

"The songs are quite immediate and hopefully they work well live and that’s it really.

"We do have a wardrobe change, halfway through the set maybe, a bit like Mariah Carey would do. We’ll be clobbered up in something."

Mariah Carey – surely the band has never been compared to her before?

Bunford laughs: "Well, it’s about time we were."

* SUPER Furry Animals play Liverpool Carling Academy on October 19.

lauradavis@dailypost.co.uk