AR: Radiator

Super Furry Animals - Radiator (1997)

I have a genre in my iTunes library called "British / Psychedelia," and there is perhaps no better band / album to sit as its archetype. (Okay, "Welsh / Psychedelic," you crazy fact checkers, you). Radiator is exemplary neo-pop-psychedelia that borrows melodic schemes / timbre from the late '60s pop-psych movement quite liberally and infuses it with a heady dose of prog, not only in the ridiculously complex counter-melodies and extended instrumentals, but also in melodramatic lyrics about demons, spies, chupacubras, "mountain people," dios mio. The central melodies / narratives, primarily on guitars (acoustic & electric), are bathed in otherworldly synths that dance hither and thither; I don't think it's humanly possible to hear this and not have your lingua franca term for "swirling" pop to mind. I, for one, would not object to SFA being used as the dictionary stand-in for what psychedelic music is; next to the XTC offshoot Dukes of Stratosphear, it's probably the most overt attempt at setting out to capture this particular sound (though, to be fair, it's thoroughly updated with Atari-blips for today's hip kids).

It's also archetypically British because the music evokes virtually every major UK rock act from the era: The Beatles, the Kinks, the Stones, David Bowie, Pink Floyd / Syd Barrett, even all the way up to the Sex Pistols for a bit of a punk component, all make appearances. Amazingly, while retreading a whole ton of in-your-LP-collection sounds (particularly Bowie, who seems to jump in every few bars), they manage to sound utterly original. This is quality, often ethereal music that wears its influence on the record sleeve but doesn't come off as a retread.

And there ends the positive. Because of all the mayhem surrounding the central lines, the singing gets buried and ends up sounding quite thin. I, sadly enough, don't like the vocalists or the way they are positioned in the mix, and this is pretty much the kiss of death for an album in the Nyetverse. There are additionally some reather onerous, dragging songs about the aforementioned proggy characters. With all apologies to that genre, there's just something utterly dorky* and ineffectively melodramatic about it - the songs "Demons," "Bass Tuned to DEAD," "Down a Different River," "Download,"** and "Mountain People" all commit this sin. You'll notice that's about half the damn album, including the entire final 18 minutes or so. Ugh.

* - Don't get me wrong; I'm a fan of prog (sometimes). I don't categorically dismiss it. But there's a certain mode of presentation - usually, these big, laborious, drawn-out numbers that try to invoke EPIC-ness via dirge-like rhythm - that consistently reminds me of the David Cross bit where he discusses the Genesis creation story and describes it as "some serious D&D shit right there." I can't take it, and in combination with these skinny vocals, I just want to cut the music then and there; I don't care how nice the swirling is.

** - One of the rare tunes in my collection that earns the one-star rating not for being spoken word or a quick ambient track but for being 4T (toothpicks-to-the-temple) BAD. It's nearly a carbon copy of the song "Superheroes" from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which itself not a bad song, but hearing it blatantly ripped off is violently vomit-inducing.

So I'm left with an album that has enough good moments to keep bringing me back, one that I fully admit has an overall cool sound and nifty songwriting, but one that I can't stomach. To be fair, there are some cool, tight highlights - the emphatic opener "The Placid Casual," the acoustic bopping avalanche of "The International Language of Screaming," and the punk-thrash of "Chupacubra" all get the job done and then some. And I am ever grateful that my collection contains the wacky, energizingly bouncy "Torra Fy Ngwallt Yn Hir," perhaps the world's best "wish-I-knew-Welsh-so-I-could-sing-along" number. But even these songs carry the weight of my biggest complaint about the album: as unique as these guys are, one of my favorite bands is a neopsychedelic outfit that carries about 10¹⁷ times as much oomph. That, natch, would be The Flaming Lips, and with that superior psychedelic-y product out there, the good moments on this disc are not enough to warrant a recommendation.

Status: Not Recommended (though check them out if you get a chance, because maybe *you* can get past the vocals)
Nyet's Fave: "Torra Fy Ngwallt Yn Hir"