Super Furry Animals are possibly one of my favorite bands as of late. They have released seven albums in nine years, Love Kraft is the bands most recent album. I don’t know why, but the Super Furry Animals remain to be an underrated and unnoticed band. I mean the band hasn’t released a bad album, and for that matter they hardly ever make a bad song. Maybe it’s the sound, or possibly the rough edged vocals that turns listeners off. If you continue on in reading this review and you are a fan of alternative or pop music than you should really look into getting this album.
You can really tell from the bands debut album that they changed a lot of things, first off the production is more clean and less sloppy. It really rubs off on the sound of the music, making things a lot more poppy and it takes out the fuzzy psychedelic feel. I can’t say I like this just because the Super Furry Animals had a really unique psychedelic/pop sound, the sound they have now isn’t bad but it doesn’t compete with the fuzzy, distorted pop songs they used to play. Another big change would be the use of synthesizers and keyboard effects. On previous albums the sound was more rough and raw, now things have a much more atmospheric, and electronic feel. I must give the band credit for trying something completely new, Love Kraft sounds really cool and down to earth but I miss the way the old Super Furry Animals used to sound like.
Now don’t get me wrong I think that this is an excellent alt/pop album it just isn’t as good as the bands earlier works. Love Kraft is the bands most poppy and new wave-ish album. Most of these tracks are extremely catchy and atmospheric. The amazing thing about Love Kraft is that the songs remain to be extremely catchy yet they also have a space age feel to them. When you listen to this album you feel like your in a different world. You sort of feel like your being pushed into the future, possibly the year 3000(the cover art suggests this??) Everything is so smooth and clean, all in all this is an excellent space age pop album that has catchy hooks and an atmospheric feel.
Instrumentally Love Kraft is solid, but not amazing. Throughout the 12 tracks the Super Furry Animals manage to fit in a wide variety of instruments. Using mainly guitars and keyboards the music is rich sugary new-wave pop. Crunchy guitar riffs, atmospheric keyboard effects and a good rhythm section. On the poppy numbers the guitar plays the biggest role at playing simple but effective riffs, the keyboards come in and play sugary scales and it just adds on to make the music more poppy. Now there are some slower and more atmospheric tracks, the guitars play softer riffs while the keyboards are used to play extremely soft and mellow bubbly effects. The music doesn’t turn out to be electronica, it just makes you want to fall asleep. The occasional piano and trumpet make brief appearances throughout the album but you can’t really tell. Once again while Love Kraft isn’t amazing instrumentally it sure is good.
Gruff Rhys is the main songwriter and vocalist. The only part of the band that is hard to get into is the vocals. Gruff has a rough, somewhat happy voice. When Gruff slows things down he has a very soft, gentle voice, it is soothing and heartwarming. Now on the quicker tracks he sounds disorganized and he really rushes things. The vocals aren’t a turn off, but they are very hard to understand and although after a few listens you will adjust to his voice it can be a turn off at first. There is no doubt that Gruff has an excellent voice, but the problem is that he tends to rush things and then things don’t turn out so well.
One thing that really annoys me is how unnoticed this band is. I admit that Love Kraft is not one of the top ten albums of 2005, but the single ‘Laser Beam’ is excellent and easily one of the best singles of the year. The song is flooding with energy and the band creates a catchy keyboard riff and it plays a huge role in the electro-pop energetic single. The seven minute opener ‘Zoom ’ is an epic poppy trip hop song that goes through odd atmospheric progression. The song speaks for most of the album, down to earth, and the song has the space age new-wave feel to it. Love Kraft doesn’t have a bad track and every time you listen to this you get the same fresh, smooth sound as you did the first time you listen to it.
Overall I would say that this is an excellent, overshadowed album. Love Kraft is a breath of fresh air for fans of new-wave pop music, or for a fan of electronic, atmospheric pop. If you are a fan of the Super Furry Animals earlier albums you might not like this because the band completely changed their sound and style. Love Kraft is a mix of electronic new-wave and catchy pop/rock. This album has a good mixture of poppy and atmospheric tracks making Love Kraft an accessible and a fresh listen every time you want to listen to it. Although the band has lost their edge from past albums Love Kraft is still an excellent album and a good listen today.
