The Extreme Centre, Rise of the Super Furry Animals and The Kind Worth Killing

Rise of the Super Furry Animals

Ric Rawlins is a music journalist who met the Super Furry Animals during the making of their final album: Dark Days/Light Years in 2009. Rise of the Super Furry Animals charts the founding of the group and concentrates on their earliest period in the late 1990s.

The book begins by recounting the SFA’s legendary appearance in a tank at an Eisteddfod at Llandeilo, before taking us back to the band's origins.

The Super Furry Animals hail from Bethesda, a small town on the A5 just before you get to Bangor. In the 1980s there seemed fewer more depressing places on the planet. The closed-down slate mine had left a rural industrial wasteland, high unemployment and an influx of English hippies signing on and smoking themselves senseless.

Ric Rawlins describes the background and influences of the band: Welsh Nationalist parents, rave culture and CB radio, which Welsh youth found the most effective way to communicate in the valleys during pre-mobile phone days.

Super Furries founder member Gruff Rhys made his debut playing plastic drums in his big brother’s punk band: Chwd Poeth (Hot Puke). The formation of S4C, the Welsh-language TV station, along with Welsh-language radio stations, meant that there was an outlet for any band who could scrape together a decent demo in the correct language, and so there was a ready audience for the band’s early work.

Super Furry Animals - Demons (Reading 97)

The foundation of the band is dated to the time Gruff Rhys met Huw Bunford whilst travelling on the roof of a train whilst trying to escape piss artists within. After being thrown off, the two found they had a lot in common during the long walk home.

The band came together quite quickly and were signed by Alan McGee’s Creation Records. McGee enthuses: “They were the last really great signing. There are only a few bands you could make a film of and SFA are one, because their story is so fucking bonkers”.

Super Furry Animals - Demons

Indeed, SFA were one of the last bands of the pre-internet age to enjoy record company largesse and go to town with military vehicles, massive inflatables and the making of a video in the Colombian jungle.

Ric Rawlins describes the formative years of the band well, The bunch of young loons developing their craft and spreading their wings is a compelling yarn and the “band as a gang” mode works well enough. Yet, try as he might, Rawlins cannot bring his characters to life. There is little depth in them and while this works well enough with passers-through – such as Rhys Ifans and Howard Marks – too often the members of the band are grey and interchangeable.

Super Furry Animals - Northern Lites (Glastonbury 1999)

Rise of the Super Furry Animals does, however, give a good outline of the ethos and individuality of the band: “Our whole point as a band almost was to bring our friends and contemporaries with us on this strange journey”.

Rawlins’ book tails off quickly soon after reaching the millennium, although the band's musical output shows little sign of decline. Alan McGee is right, the SFA story is bonkers, but Ric Rawlins doesn’t tell it terribly well.

With the Howard Marks farewell tour planned for later this year, it wouldn’t surprise me if a Super Furry reprise may be on the cards. This is really one for fans only, until someone closer to, or actually in the band, tells their story better.