Super Furry Animals at the Paradise Rock Club - 2/23

Super Furry Animals played an exquisite show last Friday at the Paradise Rock Club, a well-established venue nested on the perimeter of Boston University. To my great relief, there was only one opening band, and they were very entertaining.

Super Furry Animals

Times New Viking

Columbus lo-fi rockers Times New Viking opened the concert with high energy and a whole lot of noise. The band had a minimal setup with a keyboardist, guitarist and percussionist. There's something I really love about minimal setups that make tons of noise (i.e. Deerhoof), and this band exemplified just that. They seemed to be getting a little repetitive and unoriginal towards the end of the set, but they had a little touch to them that told me I had to be in the right mood for it.

When Super Furry Animals took the stage, an infectious, bass-heavy techno song was playing in the background and the lead singer, Gruff, came out with a large Power Rangers helmet on and he sang into the microphone by placing it against the dark-screened visor. This was one of the silly stage antics they had besides their 70's era disco/rock jumpsuits with SFA graphics patched all over. During one of the transition parts of "Receptacle for the Respectable", Gruff brought three carrots onto the stage and began eating them, screaming "RECEPTACLE" while the little bits were floating around in his mouth. After eating the second carrot, he spit all of the little morsels out and gave the third carrot to an audience member.

Super Furry Animals played a great set with a lot of songs from their 2007 album, Hey Venus!, and their 2001 release, Rings Around the World. My favorite songs from the set were "Receptacle for the Respectable", "Into the Night", "Baby Ate My Eightball" and "(Drawing) Rings Around The World".

Their sound at the Paradise was great. It seemed like they had a few problems with the levels at times but besides that, it matched the quality of the recordings. Despite the complexity of some of their tracks, they were able to incorporate a lot of the strange noises and harmonizations with pre-recorded tracks. I wish they did more harmonizing on stage, but the rest of the instrumentation made up for that with two guitars, bass, synthesizer and drums.

My mom and I got to meet the Gruff, the lead singer, before the show in a music store called "In Your Ear". He was very nice, modest and softly-spoken. You have to know that this band is from Wales and that they used to sing in Welsh, so he told us how the change to English songwriting was a little difficult. With all of the great songs and albums they have now, it looks like the change was well worth it.

Here are three links you should check out:
Super Furry Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/superfurry
Gruff's latest side project titled Neon Neon: http://www.myspace.com/neonx2
Gruff's other side project titled Candylion: http://www.myspace.com/candylionmusic