HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Guerrilla – Super Furry Animals

Ah, the late 1990s. A time of innocence. A time of Nokia bricks. A time of nu-metal. A time of unfathomably massive jeans that soaked up litres of liquid from your local nightclub dancefloor. A time when Top Of The Pops was still essential weekly viewing and the UK Singles chart was – well – still pleasingly weird. Nu-psychedelia (as the NME labelled it) was an exciting new thing in the late 90s, inspired by the success of Britpop and the Madchester scene in previous years and saw bands combining elements of techno with sunnier-sounding guitar pop. The likes of SPIRITUALIZED, THE FLAMING LIPS and MERCURY REV were all key players in this movement but – arguably – none of them came close to the level of eclectic that SUPER FURRY ANIMALS hit with their 1999 album Guerrilla.

Formed in 1993 as a largely techno-influenced act, as the 90s progressed the band began to pursue a more guitar orientated sound. After EP releases on which the band largely sang in their native Welsh, the band was spotted by Creation Records head honcho Alan McGee at a gig in Camden and soon they were signed to the hottest indie label in the UK at that time. Despite enjoying their set, McGee did ask them at this point whether they might consider singing their songs in English, only for the band to reply that they had actually been doing this for the previous couple of years. McGee had simply not been able to understand their strong Welsh accents.

Their first two albums saw SFA (as they became known to fans) achieve instant success, with a number of singles from both records hitting the UK Top 40. These included such indie-disco classics as Something 4 The Weekend, God! Show Me Magic and Hermann 🖤s Pauline. Despite being lumped in with the tail-end of the Britpop scene, the depth of their song-writing, particularly on second album Fuzzy Logic, suggested there was way more to come from the band. One minute you were listening to a blissed out psychedelic pop tune, the next a fuzz-imbued garage rock stomper. What on earth would they do next? 

In May 1999, we got our answer with the first single to be released from upcoming album Guerrilla. Northern Lites was a steel-drum filled, calypso pop anthem with jaunty brass lines and lyrics that focused on the El Nino-Southern Oscillation global climate phenomenon (of course they did). Reaching number 11 in the UK singles chart, the song was SFA’s biggest hit to date, became a huge summer anthem and suggested the band was about to really hit the big time.

Guerrilla was designed by the band to be a ‘jukebox album’, where every song sounded like something different. Still playing on the band’s pop sensibilities with influences from classic 60s psychedelic bands like LOVE, SPIRIT and THE BEACH BOYS, this time they moved away from the guitar-focused sound of their first two albums to embrace a much wider range of musical styles. 

Starting off with the dancey intro of Check It Out, the album gets going with first proper track Do Or Die, a fuzzy, high energy pop rock tune that recalls the heavier moments from Fuzzy Logic. Track three is the lush, blissed out psychedelic pop of The Turning Tide, where flutes and strings accompany the warm acoustic guitars and keyboards with frontman Gruff Rhys’ lilting Welsh tones sitting beautifully on top of it all. The rise and fall of the keyboards in the chorus here are reminiscent of a major-key version of the main riff from Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds by THE BEATLES. Lyrically, the song has undertones of the Fab Four at their most ‘out-there’ too: “The service was so slow, my eyes began to grow into telescopes.”

So far, so familiar, but with Northern Lites at track four marking the first real departure from their established style, the rest of the album follows suit in terms of its levels of experimentation. 

Night Vision is a frantic garage rock anthem dedicated to late 90s nightlife. Gruff’s increasingly deranged vocal delivery on the song recalls TALKING HEADS’ David Byrne at his Fear Of Music weirdest. The song veers off into a sinister electronic interlude in the middle, with squelchy bass synths representing that moment on a big night out where, for at least a little while, you suddenly lose it a bit, before everything crashes back in for a series of frenetic final choruses. In a similar vein, The Teacher is another short, sweet slice of punk-pop with an almost inaudible (and hilarious) series of horrified screams playing under the entire song.

The jolting techno of Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home) comes completely out of left field, the digital signal of a mobile phone popping through the speakers as the band chant the refrain of “SFA OK! SFA OK!” Some Things Come From Nothing brings the mood down a little with a beautifully introspective piece of electronica before the soulful simplicity of Fire In My Heart reminds you that, despite all the strangeness, this band can still write some of the loveliest pop music you’re likely to hear.

Following the release of Guerrilla, SUPER FURRY ANIMALS were ultimately disappointed by its lack of commercial success and followed it up in the year 2000 with the entirely Welsh language lo-fi album Mwng, almost as a reaction to the smorgasbord of genres and influences on Guerrilla. Having later signed with Sony, the band returned to commercial success with albums Rings Around The World and Phantom Power on which they embraced their love of US psychedelic rock even more obviously than they had done before.

The band are now seen as legends of the UK indie scene but their back catalogue provides so much more depth than that pithy label would suggest. Occasional reunions have taken place in recent years and demand for tickets have proven how loved SUPER FURRY ANIMALS still are. Despite all their later successes though, none of the band’s output ever quite reproduced the sheer energy, innovation and strangeness that was Guerrilla. Stick it on, bounce around and get ready to wring out the bottoms of those unfathomably massive jeans at the end of it all.

Guerrilla was originally released on June 14th, 1999 via Creation Records.

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