Phantom Power is the sixth album by Welshindie rock band Super Furry Animals, released on 21 July 2003 by Epic Records in the United Kingdom. The record was originally conceived as a ten-song concept album using D-A-D-D-A-D guitar tuning, but the band chose to abandon this idea during recording as they didn't want to constrain themselves.[1] The group did attempt to create a "more coherent" album than their past efforts by choosing songs which worked well together.[2]Phantom Power was recorded at the band's own studio, AV Happenings, in Cardiff with the Super Furries producing and engineering themselves for the first time.[1] The album features a range of musical styles, from country rock to techno, although many of the tracks are based around the acoustic guitar.[3][4][5] According to chief songwriter and vocalist Gruff Rhys, the album's lyrics deal with "broken relationships and war".[6]
The album, like their previous record Rings Around the World, was simultaneously released on CD, vinyl and DVD. The DVD featured a surround sound mix of the album along with animations, commentary by Mario Caldato Jr. (who mixed the record) and remixes. The majority of these remixes were re-released as the album Phantom Phorce in 2004. Phantom Power was well received, with many critics suggesting it was the best album of the band's career.[7][8]
Origins and recording
Phantom Power was originally conceived as a ten-song cycle in the "unconventional" D-A-D-D-A-D guitar tuning.[5][6] Singer Gruff Rhys wrote many of the songs on the album in this tuning and in the key of D major during the space of a few days. These tracks, which included the "Father Father" instrumentals, "Golden Retriever", "Hello Sunshine", "Valet Parking" and "Out of Control", were then demoed at the house of regular producerGorwel Owen with overdubs added at the band's own office-block based studio, AV Happenings, in Cardiff.[9]
The group took a hands-on approach to the actual recording sessions for Phantom Power, engineering and producing themselves for the first time.[1] Recording largely took place at AV Happenings during the second half of 2002,[6] with the band working through the night so as not to disturb staff who worked in other parts of the building during the day.[10] According to bassistGuto Pryce this involved a fair amount of trial and error as the band "didn't really know what [they] were doing". Soundproof booths were improvised by setting up tents in the office corridors: "we'd record a guitar and it'd sound rubbish and we had to figure out why. So we started experimenting with different tent designs. In the end it was the wigwam that was easiest to put up and sounded best".[1] The band had to take these booths down before office workers arrived in the morning, a process that guitaristHuw Bunford has described as "ghosts in the night ... a bit clandestine".[10] A brief two-week session with Gorwel Owen at Rockfield Studios saw some of the album's more "straight ahead" tracks recorded with live vocals before the band returned to AV Happenings and "messed around" with them.[9] When the album was almost finished the band enlisted the services of Tony Doogan who engineered sessions during which several vocal parts were recorded.[11]
Huw Bunford wrote the track "Sex, War & Robots" for Phantom Power and also provided lead vocals.
The ten song D-A-D-D-A-D concept was eventually abandoned with Pryce stating "we don't like constraining ourselves and if you've got a concept, you're doing that. And we had some other really nice tunes so we just chose the best songs".[1] According to Rhys the only plan the group stuck to was to make a "more coherent" record: "In the past ... we'd put ideas kind of side by side, and on this record we wanted all those sounds to be more blended".[2] Following arguments over the track listing of previous album Rings Around the World, after a "lot of songs" were recorded necessitating four months worth of discussions about which tracks to leave off the record, the group recorded just 16 largely acoustic based songs during the sessions for Phantom Power.[5][9] Rhys's initial batch of songs were augmented by, among others, the Huw Bunford penned "Sex, War & Robots", the first time the guitarist had had one of his songs included on a Super Furry Animals album and also the first time he had sung lead vocals for the group, "Slow Life", which grew out of an electronic piece of music keyboardistCian Ciaran had been working on for several years and "The Piccolo Snare" which was partly written in the studio.[2][9]
Short clip from "Slow Life", which merges techno with guitar pop, to illustrate the difference in styles between many of the tracks on Phantom Power.[4]
After the more produced Rings Around the World, which relied heavily on computers and electronics, the group were keen to make Phantom Power "a little more human" with guitaristHuw Bunford stating: "with technology you can do anything these days, but sometimes less is more".[1][10] Many songs on the album are acoustic based and bass playerGuto Pryce has claimed that they sounded "pretty good right from the start" which also contributed to the decision to avoid "over-tweak[ing] them in the studio".[5] Despite this the group did work electronic loops into several tracks after Ciaran bought a large number of "sound effect and light music" vinyl records from a man who worked in the same building. According to Rhys: "he knocked on the door just as we were beginning the album: "hey, I've got these records to sell, are ya interested?" And Cian went down to check them out and gave him a hundred pounds on the spot and carried 700 albums back to our tiny room".[9]
The album showcases an eclectic range of sounds from the country rock of "Sex, War & Robots", featuring pedal steel guitar,[2][3] to the heavy metal and punk of "Out of Control" and the glam rock of first single "Golden Retriever".[5][12][13] "Slow Life", a track which singer Gruff Rhys has described as the "most sonically impressive" song on Phantom Power, features techno influences and is based on a piece of electronic music written by keyboardistCian Ciaran several years earlier.[4][9] Ciaran encouraged the band to jam on top of his original track to produce a fusion of techno and guitar-pop.[3][9] "The Undefeated" is inspired by ska and reggae music, although the group removed a "cheesy white reggae" section from the song because it sounded "fucking horrible" and actively tried not to make it sound too much like a ska or reggae track as they felt they "couldn't pull it off".[9][14] Many tracks feature close vocal harmonies, with all the band apart from Pryce contributing.[4][5] These harmonies give the album a California / West Coast of America feel, with comparisons being drawn to the work of The Beach Boys, particularly on the song "Venus and Serena".[13][15][16]
Lyrical themes
Chief lyricist Gruff Rhys describes Phantom Power as a record about "broken relationships and war" with "a positive outlook to the future".
Singer and chief lyric writer Gruff Rhys has claimed that Phantom Power is about "broken relationships and war" with "a positive outlook to the future".[6] As "BBC News 24 addicts" Rhys and the band absorbed "fucked up war images" from the Iraq War during the making of the album which affected the way songs were written: "We seem to be living in such a heavy time. We're just absorbing all the words thrown at us from the TV and regurgitating them back."[6][17] Frustration with the George Bush administration and its foreign policy influenced the record with Rhys claiming that he feels qualified to address the subject as United States foreign policy "effectively decides what the foreign policy is in the UK".[11]
The two most overtly "political" tracks on Phantom Power are "The Piccolo Snare" and "Liberty Belle".[18] "The Piccolo Snare" is about "societies torn apart by war and the waste of human life". The track uses the vocabulary of the Falklands War (Tumbledown, Skyhawks etc.) but Rhys claims it is applicable to any war. "Liberty Belle" tells the story of two cartoon characters devised by Rhys, 'Liberty Belle' and 'Memory Lane', the former representing the "bells of freedom", specifically the American Dream, and the latter representing "history's harsh lessons" which Liberty Belle has failed to learn. The song is told from the perspective of a "bird living almost in a parallel universe to humans, oblivious to the gravity of the games which are being played around us", something which Rhys admits to feeling himself much of the time. "Venus and Serena" uses a story of a child who talks to his pet tortoises, Venus and Serena, as he can't communicate with his elders to make a similar point: that people feel alienated from their elected leaders. Both "Out of Control" and "Slow Life" feature regurgitated media buzzwords, with "Out of Control's" "flippant" lyrics designed to create the feel of "an over-dramatic theme to a current affairs programme". "Bleed Forever" deals specifically with the nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster which fell over North Wales, allegedly causing an increase in incidents of leukaemia among children in the area.[19]
However, Rhys has been keen to point out that the record is not a forcefully political one, claiming that most of the band's songs are "fragments of daily life; occasionally politics are a part of that. Super Furry Animals is about exploration, not political campaigning".[17][18] "Valet Parking", for example, is a song about "the glories of pan-European travel", documenting a road trip from Cardiff to Vilnius, "Golden Retriever" is about "the relationship between [Gruff Rhys's] girlfriend's two dogs - a male and a female" and "The Undefeated", inspired by a poor run of results for the Welsh football team, is about "underdogs and overdogs".[18][19]
The DVD of Phantom Power contains the 14 songs featured on the CD version of the album in surround sound, 16 remixes, commentary by Mario Caldato Jr. who mixed the record and provided one of the remixes, and song lyrics.
According to singer Gruff Rhys, the concept behind the DVD was based on the success of platform games: the listener can play the album as if it were a game and spend "months ... instead of weeks" exploring the content.[14] Unlike the DVD version of previous album Rings Around the World, which featured videos for every track, the songs on the DVD are accompanied by slowly moving animations. Rhys has stated that the Super Furry Animals wanted to use "really bland images" as viewers began to place too much emphasis on the videos on Rings Around the World and the band wanted them to concentrate on the music.[20]
KeyboardistCian Ciaran stated at the time of Phantom Power's release that the band would issue a DVD with every future album, claiming that "this is just the way we make records now". However, the band's next two albums, Love Kraft and Hey Venus!, were not made available on DVD and, in a 2008 interview with Uncut, Rhys suggested that the release had been something of a failure: "no one gave a shit because people just want to rock n' roll!"[21]
The remixes on the DVD version of Phantom Power vary from radical reworkings such as Killa Kella's beatbox treatment of "Golden Retriever" and Wauvenfold's "unrecognisable" version of "Sex, War and Robots",[22][23] to the likes of Mario Caldato Jr's take on "Liberty Belle" and High Llamas' "Valet Parking" which are merely "spruced up".[24][25] The majority of the remixes were reissued on CD as the album Phantom Phorce in 2004. According to drummerDafydd Ieuan the band didn't have the money to pay the artists involved for their remix work so, in order to provide them with royalties, promised to release an album featuring the tracks on their own label, Placid Casual.[26]
Hidden footage of the band firing machine guns can be reached by selecting the song "The Undefeated", waiting 22 seconds until the lettering starts to blink and pressing 'Enter' ('Enter' must be pressed before the lettering blinks for a second time at 24 seconds). GuitaristHuw Bunford has described this footage as being "exactly how it looked on the tin ... noisy, full of testosterone, with pumped up guys in the woods trying to kill furry animals!"[27]
Release
Phantom Power was released on CD, vinyl and DVD on 21 July 2003 in the United Kingdom on Sony's Epic imprint. The album reached #4 in the UK Albums Chart.[28] In America the album was released on 22 July 2003 by Beggars Banquet US. Phantom Power was released on 21 July 2003 in Japan with two additional tracks, "Summer Snow" and "Blue Fruit", added after "Slow Life" at the end of the album. "Golden Retriever" was released as the first single from the album, reaching #13 in the UK Singles Chart, followed by "Hello Sunshine" in October 2003 which peaked at #31.[29] The Slow LifeEP was released as a free download from the website of the band's record label, Placid Casual, on 12 April 2004, featuring the title track, "Lost Control" (a remix of "Out of Control"), and the Goldie Lookin Chain collaboration, "Motherfokker". The majority of the remixes from the DVD version of Phantom Power were released as Phantom Phorce on Placid Casual on 19 April 2004. Initial copies of this album came bundled with a CD version of the Slow Life EP.[26]Phantom Power has been certified silver in the United Kingdom, denoting sales of more than 60,000 copies.[30]
Phantom Power received generally positive reviews from critics with a score of 87 on Metacritic, denoting "universal acclaim".[33]Drowned in Sound described the album as "another fine, esoteric wonder of an LP",[16] while the NME claimed it is the group's "most focussed, energetic pop record since Radiator" and went on to state that "for a band to be hitting such form six albums into a steady career is astonishing".[13]Q called it "the band's best work to date, as accessible as it is inventive";[7]The Times agreed, calling Phantom Power "the Furries’ most satisfying album to date ... one to cherish."[8] Several critics commented on the "summery pop" nature of the record with Tiny Mix Tapes likening the album to "the sun shining through following a large and brooding thunderstorm" and The Times calling it "mellow summer listening" despite the "grim view of the world" expressed in Gruff Rhys's lyrics.[8][40][41] The NME found that Phantom Power compares favourably with the band's previous release, Rings Around the World, losing some of that album's mainstream polish.[13]AllMusic agreed, expressing relief that the band had loosened up following Rings..., which the website described as "often sounding constrained by its polished widescreen aspirations".[15]Irish website entertainment.ie saw Phantom Power as "a highly polished affair, filled with the widescreen classic pop that Gruff Rhys and co. carry off so effortlessly ... thankfully free of the techno experiments that marred so much of their previous work".[42]
There was some criticism of the album with The Guardian accusing the band of "treading water", the album suffering from overfamiliarity as the group's sixth release despite being a "lovely record".[12]Stylus Magazine expressed similar views, claiming that Phantom Power "feels very much like business as usual for the Welsh wizards, as if they've made just another album".[3] In a 2008 interview with Uncut Rhys described Phantom Power as his favourite Super Furries album, although he conceded that all the band's records "have their moments".[43]
Super Furry Animals are a Welsh rock band formed in Cardiff in 1993. For the duration of their professional career, the band consisted of Gruff Rhys, Huw Bunford, Guto Pryce, Cian Ciaran, Dafydd Ieuan. An earlier incarnation of the band featured actor Rhys Ifans on lead vocals.
Gruffudd Maredudd Bowen Rhys is a Welsh musician, composer, producer, filmmaker and author. He performs solo and with several bands, including Super Furry Animals, which obtained mainstream success in the 1990s. He formed the electro-pop outfit Neon Neon with Boom Bip. Their album Stainless Style was nominated for the 2008 Nationwide Mercury Prize. He won the 2011 Welsh Music Prize for his album Hotel Shampoo, which was followed up by American Interior in 2014, accompanied by a film, a book and a mobile app. His most recent album, Seeking New Gods, was released in 2021. He is considered a figurehead of the era known as Cool Cymru.
Rings Around the World is the fifth studio album and the major label debut by Super Furry Animals. Released on 23 July 2001 by Epic Records in the United Kingdom, it was the first album by any artist to be simultaneously released on both audio CD and DVD. The record reached number 3 in the UK Albums Chart and includes the singles "Juxtapozed with U", "(Drawing) Rings Around the World" and "It's Not the End of the World?".
Guerrilla is the third studio album by Welsh rock band Super Furry Animals. The record was released on 14 June 1999 by Creation Records and peaked at number 10 in the UK Albums Chart. Guerrilla was conceived as a commercial 'pop' album and was produced by the band themselves, as regular producer Gorwel Owen felt exhausted after a busy schedule working for other bands. Recording took place at Real World Studios, Box, Wiltshire in mid-1998 with the group experimenting with a sampler for the first time and writing a number of songs in the studio. The band tried to create a 45-minute long, immediate sounding record, and therefore chose the upbeat songs from the 25 tracks which were recorded during sessions for the album. Guerrilla was chosen as the album's title as a pun on the group's name.
Phantom Phorce is a remix album of Super Furry Animals' 2003 record Phantom Power. The remixes had previously appeared on the DVD version of Phantom Power—they were re-released as Phantom Phorce on the band's own Placid Casual label as a way of ensuring the remixers would receive royalties for the tracks. The album features a commentary from the fictional 'Kurt Stern' who appears between songs to discuss the re-recording of Phantom Power under his guidance after being unhappy with the original. First editions of the album came packaged in a case that doubled as a paper model of a video game arcade cabinet, and included a bonus CD; the Slow Life EP. Critical reaction to Phantom Phorce was generally positive.
Love Kraft is the seventh studio album by Welsh indie rock band Super Furry Animals, released on 22 August 2005 through Epic Records in the United Kingdom. The album was recorded in Spain with producer Mario Caldato Jr and was something of a departure for the band, with all members contributing songs and lead vocals alongside Gruff Rhys who had been main songwriter for the Super Furries until this point. In selecting tracks for Love Kraft a conscious effort was made by the band not to choose songs on their individual merit but rather to pick those which went well together in order to create as cohesive an album as possible. The album's name was taken from a sex shop, Love Craft, near the Cardiff offices of the Super Furries' management team and is also a nod to American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.
Hey Venus! is the eighth album by Welsh band Super Furry Animals. It was released on 27 August 2007 in the United Kingdom. Hey Venus! is the band's first full-length release on current label Rough Trade Records and, at just over 36 minutes, is also their shortest-running studio release. The title is taken from the first line of the song "Into the Night".
"Hermann ♥'s Pauline" is the sixth single by Super Furry Animals and the first to be released from their second album Radiator. It reached #26 on the UK Singles Chart on its release in May 1997.
"Fire in My Heart" is the tenth single by Welsh rock band the Super Furry Animals. It was the second single to be taken from the group's 1999 album Guerrilla, and reached number 25 in the UK Singles Chart after its release on 9 August 1999. The track, originally titled "Heartburn", has been described by the band's singer Gruff Rhys as a country and western song with lyrics that offer "soul advice".
"Ysbeidiau Heulog" is the twelfth single by Super Furry Animals. It was the only single to be taken from the album Mwng and was released as a limited edition 7" vinyl on the band's own Placid Casual label on 1 May 2000. It was the band's first single to chart outside the UK Singles Top 75 peaking at number 89. The Welsh language song has been described by singer Gruff Rhys as "throwaway pop" and likened to the music of ELO, The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and Os Mutantes.
"Juxtapozed with U" is the thirteenth single by Super Furry Animals. It was the first single to be taken from the Rings Around the World album and reached number 14 on the UK Singles Chart on its release in July 2001. The song was initially conceived as a duet but, after both Brian Harvey and Bobby Brown turned the band down, lead singer Gruff Rhys sang the entire track, using a vocoder on the verses to imitate another person. Musically "Juxtapozed with U" has echoes of Philadelphia soul and the "plastic soul" of David Bowie's album Young Americans and was inspired by the Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder track "Ebony and Ivory". Rhys has claimed that he sees "Juxtapozed with U" as "fairly subversive" because its polished pop style was in stark contrast to the "macho" guitar music the band felt was prevalent in 2001.
"(Drawing) Rings Around the World" is a song by Super Furry Animals and was the second single taken from the band's fifth album, Rings Around the World. The track reached number 28 on the UK Singles Chart on release in October 2001. Singer Gruff Rhys has described the song as being about "rings of communication around the world. All the rings of pollution".
"It's Not the End of the World?" is a song by Welsh band Super Furry Animals. It was the last single to be released from the Rings Around the World album and reached number 30 on the UK Singles Chart on its release in January 2002. Singer Gruff Rhys has variously described the track as being about the extinction of mankind and as "a romantic song about growing old".
"Golden Retriever" is a song by Super Furry Animals. It was the first single to be issued from the album Phantom Power and reached number 13 on the UK Singles Chart on its release in July 2003. The song is about the relationship between singer Gruff Rhys's girlfriend's two dogs and was written in the same key, with the same guitar tuning and around the same time as several other songs from Phantom Power.
"Hello Sunshine" is a song by the Welsh band Super Furry Animals from their album Phantom Power. It was the seventeenth single released by the group and reached number 31 on the UK Singles Chart in October 2003.
"Lazer Beam" is a single by Super Furry Animals. It was the only single to be released from the Love Kraft album and reached #28 in the UK Singles Chart. The song is "about making your own reality" and tells the story of aliens coming down to earth to shoot humans with laser beams which "make them intelligent rather than being jerks". Some of singer Gruff Rhys's lyrics were lifted from a speech made by Tony Blair at the Labour Party Conference in 2004.
Slow Life is an EP by the Welsh alternative rock band Super Furry Animals, released in 2004. The EP was made available as a free download and also saw a limited CD release, bundled with remix album Phantom Phorce. Lead track "Slow Life" appeared on the 2003 album Phantom Power and was originally composed as a purely electronic song by keyboardist Cian Ciaran several years earlier. The band were keen to finish the track and Ciaran encouraged them to jam over his original version—this jam was then edited and made into the finished song. The track "Motherfokker" is a collaboration between the Super Furry Animals and rap group Goldie Lookin Chain.
"Show Your Hand" is a song by Welsh rock band Super Furry Animals and was the first single from their 2007 album, Hey Venus!. The single was made available for download on 16 July 2007 as an iTunes exclusive and was later released in physical formats on 13 August in the UK. The track failed to penetrate the UK singles chart's Top 40, peaking at #46.
Dark Days/Light Years, the ninth and most recent studio album by Super Furry Animals, was digitally released at 8pm on 16 March 2009 via the band's website, with a physical release following on the 21st of April on Rough Trade Records. The album's title is taken from a lyric in the song "Moped Eyes".
The discography of Super Furry Animals, a Welsh indie rock band, consists of nine studio albums, four extended plays, twenty three singles and three video albums. Super Furry Animals were formed in 1993 in Cardiff, Wales by Gruff Rhys, Huw Bunford, Guto Pryce, Cian Ciaran and Dafydd Ieuan.
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