Oh, the Super Furry Animals. It's difficult to describe the music of a band with a penchant for five-part songs and futuristic cartoon creatures. A sizable crowd shuffled into D.C.'s 9:30 Club Tuesday night, hoping that seeing these eccentric Welsh rockers live would clear up the confusion.
After an exceptionally long wait in the dark, featuring a homemade cinematic offering of the band galavanting about in a golf cart, the lads finally made it onstage. The quintet delivered, keeping the crowd on their toes with light-up green space suits, wild visual effects on a screen behind them and atmospheric soundscape jams. The tone for the evening was mid-tempo Brit-pop droners, spacey jamming with laptop accents and occasional rocking moments.
Frontman Gruff Rhys didn't talk to the audience much, which was okay since when he did his accent was nearly indecipherable. He did introduce a couple of tunes and, following a few cat calls from the peanut gallery, said, "I believe there's a parrot in the room. Would you mind saying that again, parrot?" Such is the off-the-wall humor of SFA.
The band came at the audience unassumingly from under their "battery-powered" jumpsuit hoods, while the keyboardist sat hunched between his laptop and piano, not once turning toward the crowd. SFA songs tend to manically bounce back and forth between mellow and soulful grooves, electronic blips, robot voices and head-banging metal, which made for a good time watching 9:30 patrons attempting to keep up.
Disappointingly, the band didn't play any of their Welsh language songs from their earliest releases or 2000's all Welsh "MWNG." The content of the over 90-minute set was from their mild, mid-tempo pop repertoire, such as "Juxtapozed With U" and "Hello Sunshine," and more upbeat rock songs like "Ice Hockey Hair" and show closer "The Man Don't Give a Fuck," which featured photos of George W. Bush and Tony Blair flashed alongside the words "governments," "liars" and "murderers." Although it seemed out of place in an otherwise apolitical presentation, it brought out the latent political rabidity of most in attendance.
The show's most decidedly 'WTF' moment occurred during encore opener "Slow Life," when Rhys donned an oversized red Power Ranger helmet and began waving stalks of celery at the audience. He somehow sang the entire second verse without skipping a beat, his microphone protruding skillfully from the helmet's visor.
After the 45-minute encore, the band departed the stage and cued up another home movie. This time, it was of SFA roaming around D.C. city streets and the National Mall, thanking "the good people of Washington" and rolling credits of the band and crew - instilling an excited murmur of, "Hey, I live there!" from everyone in the club who'd downed a beer or two. Indeed, such personalized treatment of individual venues is rare in this digital day and age, and made the zany night that much more memorable for all.
