As paradoxical as it sounds, Hey Venus sounds precisely like what those unfamiliar with Super Furry Animals would expect an album by the band to sound like, but they never have until now and the band has honestly never sounded so good. For the first time, singer Gruff Rhys and company have stopped resisting their inclination to indulge in every single solitary super sound of the seventies and discovered that they’re able to make those sounds vital again in so doing. The record really does play like a compendium of the greatest sonic moments of the disco and crotch rock era; songs like “Neo Consumer," “Run-Away” and “Baby Ate My Eightball” all make the most of densely layered vocal arrangements the same way Queen did; a thick-as-a-brick wall of voice ploughs along at an unstoppable rate, flanked on one side by soaring guitars and thundering drums on the other. That fact ostensibly forces the album to function like a stitch in time; by turns, Super Furry Animals mimic great ideas that are thirty years old (the Grease soundtrack gets a visit on “Run-Away," Brian Wilson-era Beach Boys in “Show Your Hand” and, of course, Queen on “Into The Night”) but with a healthy update of indie rock irony that makes it feel as if the band is smiling and winking at their audience as they try on each different hat. It’s actually pretty amazing how flexible Super Furry Animals prove themselves to be here; no matter how goofy their choices for genres to bend are on Hey Venus!, they pull it off masterfully and without a single misstep.
The second, bonus disc attached to this special edition continues the trend for an additional four tracks with a little PC-readable footage thrown in for good measure. While the band did poke into the ‘70s disco vibes on the original release (“Baby Ate My Eightball”), “Aluminum Illuminati” is where they really put on the sequins and play it a little more straight-faced, and “These Bones” re-examines The Beach Boys.
The downside to these four songs is that the terrain they’re occupying already got covered on the original release of Hey Venus! and so it just feels like too much of the same gag. That they’re well done isn’t in dispute, but who likes hearing the same joke twice in the same hour? At that point, you just have to laugh politely and that’s the case with the bonus disc in this set too. Overall though, Hey Venus is a fantastic record for Super Furry Animals and certainly one of their most ambitious offerings to date. We can only hope that some of the sounds on this album get thrown into the generic melting pot for future use again under a different guise.
Hey Venus! is out now. For more information visit www.superfurry.com
