Super Furry Aminals – Bowery Ballroom – Last Night.
It was a last minute decision to check this show out but I’m glad we did. Ant and I spent many long, stoned, dormy nights with this band. Namely, their ridiculously trippy DVD for “Rings Around the World”. What a wonderfully over-produced album!
The Rings Around the World DVD was actually pretty ambitious for its time…6 years ago. One unique video for every song on the album was fairly innovative…at least to me.
We bonded, high off shitty schwazzy weed in Putnam hall over that DVD the same way we bonded over “Without Me” (wow, Jenna Jameson used to be good-looking…) when it came out. Not lying…we must have played it 40 times in one night…
Anyway, so, now that the guy is living on my couch its only fitting that we finally checked this band out last night.
The show was unbelievably charming. Once Gruff came out and sang the end of “Slow Life” through a huge Power Rangers helmet, I realized…that once this band is stripped of studio trickery, its their humor that really carries them. Their music sounds like a mix of classic American guitar rock, 60’s pop, and late-90’s Warp-acid-electronica. Which, should be clear, is a great mix, but it requires a lot of potentially wanky production tweaks (namely when they bring out the blips and beats) that, without a sense of humor would be obnoxious and pretentious. BUT, the Furries have humor in spades (it was clear from their perfectly timed stage banter) so all was well on stage.
Wow..I can barely form a complete thought today…best keep this short.
They played some damn classics, and some songs I’ve never heard before. Which was fine…whatever song they played from “Love Kraft” was the highlight, maybe because Ant started yelling something about the Allman Brothers when it started.
They wrapped up with their perennial closer – “The Man Don’t Give a Fuck” and graciously walked off stage, probably to jump in some weird interspacial submersible, to head on back to Wales. It was their last show of the tour and they were rightfully excited to get home.
Good job fellas.
Here is the second-to-last track they did:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvHH17QG_Ds&rel=1]
More pictures and video from my roommate after the jump…if “after the jump” means “once I have time to borrow his camera”…
Have a great day…I’m going to spend it trying to differentiate my ass from my elbow.
