Super Furry Animals - Mwng

10.0 - Wales - 2000

- Masterpiece - 

When Guerrilla's kitchen-sink-electro-pop-psych failed to become the hoped-for massive hit (due in some part, according to Gruff Rhys, to the lack of a proper music video for the lead single "Northern Lights"), the Super Furry Animals went on "pop-strike." Rather than spending endless amounts of time painstakingly assembling commercially-minded pop gems, the band decided to quickly record a lo-fi collection of songs entirely in Welsh (many of which had been written for Guerrilla but held back). The result was not only the group's best album, but also a powerful cultural and national statement (the album was lauded in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom).

Expressions of Welsh nationalism aside, there's something incredible about hearing the Super Furries sing a whole album in Welsh. As a teenager, hearing "Torra Fy Ngwallt Yn Hir" on Radiator was an exotic thrill beyond the subversive resurrection of a once dying language: the sound of Cymraeg itself, to these English ears at least, is simply beautiful. There is no better demonstration of that than the gorgeous unearthly harmonies on Mwng's standout track "Ymaelodi A'r Ymylon" (hands down my favourite SFA tune). Led by Cian Ciaran's harmonium over an acoustic guitar, the tune quickly blossoms into an explosion of mellifluous stacked harmonies that, with their unfamiliar phonemes, sound exquisitely alien. 

Musically, Mwng is supposed to be a stripped-down record. Much of it was recorded "live" by the band with a minimum of digital trickery. Make no mistake, however, this is no Furries Unplugged record. Though the electronica elements may be mostly absent, Mwng perhaps represents the band at their most ambitious. "Drygioni" and "Ysbeidiau Heulog", the two most upbeat tracks, showcase the group's clattering, sunny pop-psych to great effect, whereas "Y Gwyneb Iau" and the cover of Datblygu's "Y Teimlad" see the band at perhaps their mellowest and prove that they don't need full string sections to create lush, gentle ballads. "Nythod Cacwn", presented as a demo recorded solely by Rhys, has a wonderful melancholic, folky sound that belies the fact that the song humourously recounts drummer Daf's misadventures with a swarm of bees on a beach. The album's most musically adventurous parts find the band using their stripped-down approach to create some genuinely and wonderfully odd soundscapes as evidenced by "Pan Ddaw'r Wawr" with its circular, wheezing, vaguely sinister harmonium melody and the deliriously evil sounding tribute to the Roman road "Sarn Helen" (described by Rhys as something to be played "cruising down the A5 to Rome in a two-door chariot").

Above all, however, Mwng is more than just the some of its parts. More than any Super Furries album, it hangs together as a cohesive whole (perhaps being sung entirely in Welsh gives it a sense of unity and purpose) and is utterly devoid of the (admittedly still killer) filler that would sometimes clog up the back half of their other records. Love it.