Super Furry Animals: Phantom Power : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Having reached a pinnacle of spacey pop genius with 2001's Rings Around the World, the Welsh quintet Super Furry Animals could be forgiven for taking a rest, as its members seem to do on Phantom Power's gorgeous opening track, the pastoral "Hello Sunshine." But that song's easy beauty obscures a glum plea for relief -- "In honesty it's been a while/Since we had reason left to smile" -- and on most of the fourteen densely composed yet effortlessly melodic tracks here, singer Gruff Rhys details post-9/11 agonies. "Liberty Belle" is a cartoon eulogy for American idealism gone mad ("We're digging to hell/Drowning in our oil wells"), while "The Piccolo Snare" confronts the absurdity of war more directly: "Have you ever seen the sea/Painted red by a bleeding army?" But the modern age ain't all bad; Rhys knows the joy of taking a silver Bluebird from Wales to Lithuania, cranking the radio all the way, like Chuck Berry or Jonathan Richman reborn in the euro zone. "I just jump in my car and go," he sings.

BEN SISARIO
(RS 928, August 7, 2003)