Super Furry Animals Save My Life: The glorious results of a misspent evening; or, the dangerous aftermath of a you-can-only-call-it-disappointing Guided By Voices show on a night when a band called Phantom Planet outshined indie-rock’s Abraham

I find it difficult to deal with, but this has become my realty: struggling to dampen the warp of last nights excess (three Excedrin and a half gallon jug of water) and driving to a donut shop at 8:47 a.m. to get something for those kids at home to eat (huh? Where did they come from?), all the while hoping against reasonable hope that at any moment I’ll find myself driving headlong off of some cliff and hurling comfortably out through the air – in glorious, awestruck slow motion – only to land with a smile on my face in an exceptionally soft field of poppies for a hard earned and well deserved return to restful slumber. The sleep of the just (me) - as I am at this moment seeing things.

And believe me, ‘seeing things’ is all it is. The urge to be somewhere other than here is never so great as it is when you're trying desperately to endure the shitty day-after end of an admirable self-administered poisoning. Experience, however, remains the most cruel and vicious reminder that, in your hardened reality, there are no cushioned fields of poppy, nor any restful slumbers for the foolish and the stupid (both of which, for right now, I am a card carrying member).

So I squint against the morning sun, tighten my grip on the steering wheel, and wonder (hope) whether or not I might be able to hold down a cup of coffee. I doubt it. I feel lousy. I grab a quick look at myself in the rear-view mirror and am startled - I look even worse than I feel. Oh God…dear God, if only you get me through this time, I swear I’ll never drink again…

Such a familiar old lie (but hey, I hadn’t used it in at least six months, maybe more), and I cannot even finish the thought anymore (sincerity for such things, as for most things in my life, died – probably of cirrhosis - about a thousand or more drinks ago.) I regroup long enough to notice the silence in my vehicle and to realize that I had no bearings. Where was I? This intersection doesn’t seem familiar. A pause at a stop light and I regain my sense of whereabouts along with the stabbing pain in my skull which only serves to remind me of the previous evenings disappointing Guided By Voices / Phantom Planet show.

Not that the spiffy looking boys from Phantom Planet were at all responsible - they did their part. In fact, I’d like to say that they stole the show, but that assertion can only come adjoined by an asterisk because the disappointing failure of the much-loved/revered Bob Pollard and his band, retrospectively, may have favorably tinged Phantom Planet’s high-energy rockroll loving success. But successful it was nonetheless. The Planet boys worked their brand of influence-engorged pop into a raucous (at least as close as they’re probably able to – or even need to – get) and rowdy set that came across as an earnest and honest wet look-at-me-now rockroll dream; the kind that every adolescent who ever let loose a single I-wanna-be-a-rock’n’roll-star leap, kick, or air guitar windmill has hopefully yet fruitlessly harbored through so many daydream hours of secondary education boredom.

Phantom Planet’s record, The Guest, a rather wide-eyed approach to the rockroll form, often seems a tad mushy lyrically and struggles at times to hide its influences (in fact, it struggles mightily in spots. "Nobody’s Fault" is a Xerox copy of Elvis Costello’s "Living in Paradise". But, considering the evident lack of historical perspective in today’s musical youth, it will probably prove itself to be a clever move and it is a welcome live moment.) It is an undeniably catchy and wholly likeable record, and I find myself listening to it more often than my more cynical friends can comprehend, but it is also a record that leaves you wondering how sincere the whole affair might be.

So you’ve gotta hand it to these guys, they were quite the live surprise, particularly in how they took an album full of good but at times edgeless material and slapped some pretty nifty dentures into them to achieve some bite. Not the stuff of hallelujahs and revelations, but a good show done with a keen ear for what the people want and a respect for the energy that rockroll harbors (or is supposed to). It was fun…and Lord knows there’s nothing wrong with that in these days of fear. Fun don’t happen enough in music these days so you’d better take it (if you can even recognize it anymore) where you can get it. I tip my hat to these kids - I’ve seen so-called better bands perform far lesser shows - and I was about to again.

Oh how I wish there were irony to be detected in Bob Pollard’s now tired Anglo-I-am-Roger Daltrey stage presence, but that would imply that the slight English accent that Pollard co-opted during his smatterings of stage banter was a conscious joke, which was something that no one who stood there and watched - as the man aged right before our eyes - was ready to believe. It would also portend a wiser and/or wider purpose to the music that, at most turns, is undeniably infectious - but that too (also) is something that not many seem to really believe anymore. Perhaps this was just one night; one dull-witted and uninspired evening (those happen, you know?) wherein Guided By Voices just wasn’t up to the task. Maybe all of the weird cult embracing (Pollard referred to the dedicated audience members as "my GBV kids", a silly idea that might raise a lampooning chuckle if anybody thought he was poking fun at such nonsense as Jimmy Buffet’s "parrotheads", and not simply turning into his own generations alt/indie rock Buffet himself) was just a crutch being used on a night that the band knew they didn’t have much to offer (surely they have been better live…right?) – something easy to fall back on.

All of which is not to say that Guided By Voices sucked on this particular evening, they are, in fact, too talented to flat out suck. The band itself, led by Doug Gillard’s oft-amazing guitar – a Midwestern Mick Ronson if I ever did see one – was actually very, very good. The problem was Pollard.

"He seems creepy," said a first time GBV show go-er, and she was right. Weaving and romping around like a overgrown Stevie Nicks and then dropping straight from that into his mic-swinging Daltrey fetish made Pollard seem very creepy, and I was relieved (and glad) that someone else said it - because I was thinking it and got the feeling quite a few others were also. It was as if Bob Pollard had become everyone’s rockroll dad getting a little out of hand at an otherwise uneventful and dull wedding reception with everyone just watching, and hoping that he doesn’t wind up hurting himself.

Standing at the urinal, next to an assumed GBV fan (he was sporting a fresh black Guided By Voices tour t-shirt) as the band was rolling through the middle of their set, we were being serenaded by the lounge area’s jukebox. Mott the Hoople’s "One of the Boys" muscled its way over the muffled thumps that crept through the walls from the adjacent ballroom where the Voices were plying their trade. The cat next to me wobbled a bit, then steadied himself, finished his business and said aloud, "Man, it’s hard to leave this song," referring to the Hoople’s smirking roar. "Pollard and Gillard ought to be playing this kind of shit." Amen brother. When I exited the men’s room myself the guy was still standing at the door that leads from the lounge area to the ballroom, hesitant to leave, waiting for Ian Hunter to finish his song.

Back on the ballroom stage Bob Pollard was still doing his version of leg kicks, windmilling the microphone, and strutting like a schoolyard bully. It was more of his middle-aged Midwesterner’s anti-rock star as rock star irony (butisitreallyironic?) act, and it wasn’t working, for me at least, anymore. I thought of Ian Hunter, looked at Pollard on stage, and then began wishing that he’d think of Hunter a bit more too. There’s something about aging gracefully in rock and roll, and not many people can pull it off. Ian Hunter comes quickly to mind as one who has; Pollard certainly owns that kind of maturity in his songs (which, again, are often terrific), but sooner or later that maturity has to take the stage with the man, he’s too good not to let it, and as things stand as of this past Friday evening’s show the lack thereof can only interfere with the high quality of both his band and the material. Maybe I just don’t ‘get it’, and until I do I’ll just stick to the records.

Half way to the donut shop I decided to break the numbing silence and slipped a disc into the car stereo - half hoping that my head could handle the noise and half hoping that the noise could take me beyond my head’s pain. I’d been reveling in the ELO-ish (yes, as in Electric Light Orchestra, whose influence is decidedly noteworthy) supernova on disc one of the new Super Furry Animals record - Rings Around the World - for close to three days now and realized that I had only paid a cursory visit to the much anticipated pleasures of its sibling - so I figured what the fuck? Now is as good as anytime to give the thing a spin.

My right eye was throbbing with such painful furor that my nose began to run and my teeth chattered. My hand shook as I slipped the disc from its container and into the stereo unit. God, I felt fucking rotten. The worst I had in quite some time. I’d been hurting myself even more so by going over some thoughts about the preceding nights show (which ultimately suffered into the mess in the paragraphs above) and was ready to welcome some Furry Animal escapism.

Fury Animal escapism, as it were, had become my recent obsession and Rings Around the World now served as my galaxies sun. Gauged against the previous SFA record - Fuzzy Logic - complete with its inherent, well, um, fuzzy logic, Rings is a syrup-pop gumdrop – but that’s an altogether different and unfair measurement because this here is a band that just doesn’t give a fuck about fitting in or sucking on the hind end of a notable trend, so we’ll just take ‘em as they serve ‘em up.

As a work of its very own merit (and if it truly matters to ya, I’d take this one over Fuzzy right now – right now. Fortunately, I can have them both, so bugger off) Rings is a wonderful chum bucket of pop intrigue (melody, harmony, catchy), digital doodling (a swell Buck Rogers TV show "bidi-bidi" kicks off disc two – ohh that Erin Gray!), and altogether swell songs. I’d been buried in disc one’s high-stepping oomph for a long enough time that I was anxious to pry my way into disc two just to figure out how far these guys could carry their easy-going laissez-faire who-gives-a-fuck vibe…and even sporting an anguish inducing hangover, I was anticipating good things. These fuckers had it easy: a suffering admirer who was too weak, and too drowned in his own mental hyperbole to make a rational judgment. Disc two would, as I saw it, shimmer – it was only a simple matter of sliding it in the player and turning up the sound.

And you know what? That’s exactly how it happened. I knew it going in, and nothing changed my mind – the second platter just served to extend my euphoria about these guys. The second disc is, however, a more somber and sobering affair (exactly what the doctor, if I could afford one, would have ordered). But the Furry Animals do sober/somber as well as they did gleeful/menacing/disdainful/blissfully apathetic on the first disc (on which they notably sample the Stooges – "Ann" is the song, and it makes no fucking sense here, except for he shared amusement of pissing all over things that people think they hold sacred). "Tradewinds" drifts along with melancholy (intro’d by the nifty "bidi-bidi" of course) until it bumps smack dab into some Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter-ian guitars singing their way through their own tune ("Roman Road"). The Wagner and Hunter sounds are no mistake here either – the second disc of this record takes 70’s rock and roll and bounces it off a few walls until it seems, gulp, acceptable again (as if it ever weren’t! For all of the elitist bitching, moaning and poking fun at, the 70’s were a damn fine rockroll decade.) "Tradewinds" slips into "Roman Road" which get trudged on by "Patience" which in turn melts under the bombastic "Happiness is a Warm Pun" which…

Well you’ve got the idea now, Super Furry Animals disc 2: 70’s groove rock done all up for a new world, a new generation, with a hipster’s twist on paper. I say ‘on paper’ because the twisting is sure to be done by those of us in this rockwrite scam who feel that there is a need to sometimes intellectualize that which should be accepted as it is. I’d dare to say that the boys in the SFA don’t look at this thing as a wink and an agenda, it’s their work, and it’s what they do. And when what you do is make rockroll that breathes in some of the best "classic" sounds of an oft-maligned decade, well then, there’s hardly a reason to try and be coy. The Furry Animals are a lot of things (snide, sarcastic, caustic, witty, tuneful), but coy ain’t one of them.

I toss the sack of donuts into the car and roll out of the parking lot playing the second disc some more. My headache is gone – for now. I smile as I hear what these guys are up to and I wonder whether I ought to listen with a more skeptical ear. I try to put a filter between how the record is making me feel and my supposed "critic’s eye", but it’s fruitless. The sounds remind me in a lot of ways of everything I’d absorbed as a late 70’s adolescent, but they do not necessarily take me back to those halcyon days the way a tune on a "classic" rock radio station would. With those tunes – those ‘oldies’ of my life - I’d probably just smile, sing a bar or two with the radio, and then shake my head in amusement and turn the dial – like I’ve done a million times before. The Super Furry Animals lead me down memory’s lane like a corpulent ghost of Christmas past – bloated with memories of familiar sites, familiar sounds, and with a weary-but-relieved eye cast upon what made me who I am. I love this record and I know I probably couldn’t cast an appropriate critical glance its way, but I don’t give a damn. I just drive on, playing it loud and smiling. And I once again, in a feeble act of contrition, lie to God that I’ll never drink so much in one night again.

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