Gruff Rhys - Candylion (Rough Trade)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
You know an album's been a worthwhile way to spend however long it's been you've been listening to it when you start formulating theories. 'Candylion' is Super Furry Animals man Gruff Rhys' second solo album, one much better than his first, and it makes me think these thoughts...
Maybe being on his own even gives him clarity. Maybe all the SFA do, there being so many of them and them having the best job in the world, is just jam things out a little too much. Maybe that's why a lot of the material on their last few albums has lasted a good two, sometimes three minutes too long. There was much of that material that could have been a great pop song, but instead was dragged, jammed and eeked out to breaking point, losing vitality along the way. Thing is, almost everything on 'Candylion' is under three and a half minutes long (apart from the closing 'Skylon!', an excellent story ingeniously told over a hypnotic riff that lasts for fourteen minutes because it needs to, not because they've forgotten how to end it).
What kind of animal are we dealing with here? Well, 'Candylion' itself is a beautiful song, childlike in its naiviety, a tune lyrically based around not being able to get a nonsensical phrase out of your head and instead of trying to escape its ludicrousness, ending up building a whole magical world around it. The album is that world, the world of the 'Candylion', the only world in which such a creature can exist.
Of course, it often sounds like a Super Furry Animals record - but a really rather great one. 'The Court of King Arthur' for example plods along like something from 'Fuzzy Logic' being played acoustically, like a more-leaden 'God! Show me Magic'. Alas, there isn't a good way of saying 'leaden', but there really should be. These songs actually feel so breezy, so spacious, so delicate - things like 'Lonesome Words' even being so magical that you wouldn't question their inclusion on, for example, your favourite Shins record.
Chances are - and this is special - that you'll love it from the start, and keep loving it. And that's such an important thing to feel about a record. You won't have realised how much of a singer songwriter Gruff Rhys is before, straight up, plain and simple, he could have done this from the start and we'd have lapped it up. But time spent amongst the Superbly Furred has rubbed off on him as an individual and an artist, as it was bound to - he knows when things are going stale, knows that each verse has to be at least subtly different from the last, that drum parts should enhance the song instead of just pin it down, and that there's space for things such as electronic bleeps in melancholic songs, if done tenderly. And everything the Candylion does in his world is done very, very tenderly indeed.
'Painting People Blue' is, as fellow rockfeedbacker Kevin John Molloy pointed out over a glass of wine or thirteen, really quite psychedelic in an innocent rather than a zany way. Just with the melodic, melancholy acoustic guitar temple you see, Rhys manages to do quite a few things - I'm just realising what a masterful songwriter he is, and this setting really gives that a chance to shine - be it cutesy pop, spaced out twiddling, or just beautifully twisted country tunes like 'Beacon in the Darkness', or futuristic Welsh language ballads like 'Con Carino'.
The real, true mindset of the 'Candylion' however is one of a beast at play, something typified by 'Gyrru Gyrru Gyrru', a ridiculously catchy tune (annoying, as I want to sing along, but as the damn thing's in Welsh and I don't know how to pronounce 'Gyrru' - which is said fourteen times in succession in the chorus - I'm left sounding like an idiot) which sits at the heart of this splendid record. It comes eventually to the point where you struggle to find anything bad to say about it - certainly the shimmering 'Ffrwydriad Yn Y Ffurfaren' and meaty 'Now That The Feeling Has Gone' deserve only praise - and it's a struggle I won't even attempt. There isn't anything bad to say about it.
These aren't sketches of songs, like his last one turned out. Not a solo record for the sake of it, no - proper stuff, this. You wonder why more of this isn't saved for the full band experience when you hear something as good as 'Cycle of Violence', but maybe he worries what those pranksters would have done with these persistent, jaunty rhythms and succinct, rewarding melodies - stretched them out beyond recognition and ruin them perhaps? If so, Rhys needs to be more of an arrogant lead singer. 'Candylion' will do brilliantly as it is (heck, it's the best album I've heard so far this year...tisk), but if the ethic behind its creation was applied to the next Super Furries record I might not only be able to say that 'Candylion' is the best thing Gruff has been involved with since 'Mwng', but that finally, with their frontman on form and running the show, SFA would have done something better even than 'Radiator'.
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment