Released: 2003
If it was all making sense, you were doing it wrong. The Super Furry Animals had made an unconscious commitment to not making sense, as if sense was something to be looked down upon, and set off right from the release of their debut album Fuzzy Logic to make the opposite of sense, to be sense Kryptonite, signing for Brit pop bastion Creation, invading space with rave tanks, compromising national security in the form of inflatable teddy bears.
By 2003 they’d musically traversed a gamut of different avenues, rejecting mediocrity and the lazy pursuit of low risk options in the process. Somehow they’d also come through on the other side and had arrived at their sixth album Phantom Power, dubbed their “West Coast” record, but one on which they also addressed the environmental crisis and that was tainted in the background by the Gulf War.
Shh, here’s the not making sense part. Golden Retriever was the album’s first single, a marker that duelled with folk and glam rock and that apparently had not the slightest care about public appearances. To underline this Gruff Rhys and co. donned Yeti suits in the promotional video and generally gave the impression that they were happiest when just wagging their tales. In a career made from weird and wonderful, by this point it seemed like the most sensible thing to do.
The Voice Of Unreason 