Super Furry Animals - Guerilla

Guerrilla is the third album by Super Furry Animals. The record was released on 14th June, 1999 by Creation Records and peaked at number 10 in the UK Albums Chart.

With a bigger budget from Creation and choosing to self-produce the album with studio wingman / engineer, Michael Brennan, in rural splendour, the band determinedly set about making an upbeat, pop record that would deliver a punch inside 45 minutes. What actually emerged was a kaleidoscopic and indefinable gathering of vibrant songs that, while brimming with intended positivity, embraced accidental studio discoveries, missteps in the recording process and a new sense of democracy as the band shared production duties.

Featuring two hidden tracks, "Citizen’s Band" (inspired by Gruff’s experiences during the 1980’s CB radio craze in remote North Wales) coming in before the official opener, "Check It Out", and "Chewing Chewing Gum (Reprise") sitting in the gap after the ‘closing’ glam-rock stomp of "Keep The Cosmic Trigger Happy", Super Furry Animals were found to be in playful mood.

Their selection of singles offered a potent, at-a-glance guide of the band’s career-spanning sounds, with "Northern Lites" (No.11, UK Singles Chart) poppy, steel drum-infused calypso foretelling the unashamed, hit-making approach that would follow them into 2001’s Rings Around The World and 2003’s Phantom Power. At the same time, gentle acoustic ballad, "Fire In My Heart" (No.25, UK Singles Chart) and punky, gobbledygook third single, "Do Or Die" (No.20, UK Singles Chart) shared the charming, naïve immediacy of their debut, Fuzzy Logic and it’s follow-up Radiator.

Constantly casting their gaze into the future, "Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home)" foretold of iPhone dominance in the age when heavyweight, low-tech Nokias ruled the world, taking rhythmic cues from one of the band’s mobile ring tones and the sampled sound of guitarist, Huw tripping over a lead. For every attempt made at a pop song, there was a "The Sound Of Life Today", an interlude formed of 22 seconds of the tender, yet warped eighth track, "Some Things Come From Nothing", being played backwards. Electricity also pulses obviously through the record, with Ciarán’s growing assemblage of gadgetry forming a studio within a studio at Real World, casting bleeps and wailing circuits across the album more liberally than had been heard on earlier recordings.