Deep inside the bowels of San Francisco's fabled Fillmore, Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys is awaiting his dinner. A mile away, Grandaddy's Jason Lytle drinks wine and checks out skateboard videos with friends. The co-headlining duel between the wacko Welsh wonders, now up to their sixth album proper with Phantom Power, and the captivatingly off-kilter Central Californians, whose Sumday is their fourth album, is a pitch-perfect sonic match -- both bands make socially-aware, weird-but-melodic pop, with Grandaddy skewed towards woozily majestic psychedelifolk and the Furries' filled with kitchen-sink ambition that leaves room enough for prog, garage and techno. The two frontmen came together with Rolling Stone through the magic of cell phone three-way calling -- though Rhys keeps cutting in and out, having retreated to the bathroom to escape the dreaded drummer soundcheck.

Have you done this before?

Lytle: We've toured together and we had a good time. We haven't seen each other in a long time.

Rhys: Five years. We finally released a record at the same time again. It's good, we work in the same line of melody but I think we sound really different from each other.

Lytle:We're on the same philosophical level, more than a textbook kind of thing.

Rhys:We had a game of football -- soccer -- once and you killed us!

Lytle:It was at a ferry parking, an impromptu football match. It was pretty much understood that you guys were going to beat us. Somehow, miraculously, that didn't happen, and it's even more of an oddity in my mind because we were drunk. I'm not taking credit for it.

Rhys: We thought we were going to thrash the Americans. We're armchair soccer players.

Both bands seem to value their hometowns, you haven't moved away . . .

Rhys: I actually left a long time ago -- my hometown is Bethesda. There's no train that runs through there, so I had to move to Cardiff.

Lytle: You ever go visit?

Rhys: All the time. We did a show there.

Lytle: Living in Modesto, I have to be that much more creative, I don't have everything right in my lap and right in my back yard. I have to try a little harder, and sometimes that's not a bad thing. It means that you really want to be doing what it is that you're doing. Living in a place where not much is going on makes me have to work. And when I go see other places I really appreciate it a lot more.

Rhys: I think that's true about Cardiff as well. You don't feel pressure to join in a scene. You are left alone to some extent. It's a much easier life.

Do you both record at home as well?

Rhys: We have a space, with free electricity, so we just hang out there and charge our cell phones and make tea, but then we go and record somewhere else.

Lytle: This last album we recorded in my house. I just have a regular house in a little Edward Scissorhands neighborhood. It has a nice lawn and roses in front and nice painted trim, but inside it's all recording equipment and pianos and organs and drum sets. Every album we've recorded in a different location -- another example of how I always seem to do things the hard way. The breaking down and reassembling of the equipment is very therapeutic for me -- it reminds me of when I used to do real work, rather than weird rock & roll lifestyle work. Technology: friend or foe?

Rhys: We have five speakers in the studio so we can make surround sound mixes -- we like to explore technology and celebrate it, but, ultimately to pass them on from generation to generation, songs have to be simple enough [to be] played and sung with bagpipe accompaniment. Technology is great as long as we realize in the future we'll probably be living in caves with no electricity.

Lytle: I'm really intrigued by it, but I realize how inept I am, and I don't have a lot of patience. I would much rather spend three hours playing the piano, or outdoors, then I would going through a manual trying to figure out a new piece of equipment.

Rhys: One of the good things about being in the band is we are very different, for instance, Cian [Ciaran] has an incredible handle on technology and computers, and I'm sort of the opposite. He can play piano as well. He's a very handy guy.

Well, anyone who's seen you knows Cian is the Furries secret weapon. What about Grandaddy?

Lytle: I think Aaron [Burtch]. He's a very good people barometer. I've often thought throughout the years about how our band remains so levelheaded, and so, I don't know, normal and approachable. I think if any one of us started to get a big head, for whatever reason, you couldn't get by Aaron without feeling stupid. It's very fitting that he's also the drummer, and a very steady drummer. He represents the foundation of our band.

Rhys: My friend Dan is here offering trout.

Lytle: The trout is pretty good. There's not many bones.

Rhys: Do you fish?

Lytle: I don't. Aaron is an avid fisher, though oddly enough, he doesn't eat fish. He's a catch and release fisherman. It's very sort of meditative for him, he just likes to be outdoors, and he likes the anticipation of everything that goes into it, preparing, the thrill of the chase, the completion of the mission. He's more in it for the experience.

Rhys: I've got vegetarian friends who fish as well. They go to the sea shore and they listen to psychedelic music and fish and throw them back.

What's your favorite of each other's work?

Lytle: I was jogging for a while on tour and my jogging soundtrack was their new record. Really good jogging-and-headphones album. It's so well-rounded, and just out-there enough. I love balance, I'm a big fan of everything being within comprehension, but still pushing the boundaries. It really reeks of that.

Rhys: I've never tried jogging.

Lytle: It's more like a brisk walk.

Rhys: On their new album, I like . . . what is it, the "loneliest parking lot" song?

Lytle: "Saddest Vacant Lot in All the World."

Rhys:That takes me somewhere else, every time.

I know we all love the Flaming Lips, but do you feel like they've stolen a bit of your thunder with all the animal costumes?

Rhys: It's just a coincidence, being influenced by the same stuff. We're living in the same time.

Lytle: I don't think one of [the Lips'] costumes can hold a candle to the Yetis!

And finally . . . as touring bands, would you consider trying McDonald's new adult Happy Meal?

Lytle: You're kidding. There's just nothing happy about that. They should have meals for whatever mood you're really in.

Rhys: A "Sad Meal."

Lytle: An "I Don't Care Meal" more than anything.

Rhys: "Lonely Meal."

Lytle: With a section that the people have to sit in by themselves. And a bag with two eyeholes.

JASON COHEN
(October 2, 2003)