Track Listing

1. Furryvision
2. The Placid Casual
3. The International Language Of Screaming
4. Demons
5. Short Painkiller
6. She's Got Spies
7. Play It Cool
8. Hermann's Pauline
9. Chupacabras
10. Torra Fy Ngwallt Yn Hir
11. Bass Tuned To D.E.A.D
12. Down A Different River
13. Download
14. Mountain People

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50748 in Music
• Released on: 2001-01-15
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Customer Reviews

Exciting, imaginative, clever, funny. Superb album.
When the Super Furry Animals are at their best they stand head and shoulders over their contemporaries - and they have never made a better album than this. The first few tracks are good solid SFA fare, if nothing revelatory, but by the time Demons fades out the Furries are well and truly firing on all cylinders and proceed to belt out one of the strongest middle sections of an album you'll have heard in many moons.

The Beach Boys comparisons usually get wheeled out every time this album is mentioned, and while it's true that a few tracks e.g. She's Got Spies are sprinkled with Wilsonesque "oooo"s and "ba ba ba ba"s (and unlike certain other popular Welsh bands they pull it off without sounding like they're playing a Christmas song) there's more often a late 70s/early 80s power pop vibe going on, such as the fantastic Chupacabras (furiously thrashed out in barely 90 seconds) or the stompy genius of Hermann Luvs Pauline.

Although mainly guitar-based, instruments are wielded with refreshing imagination and a glimpse of the band's oft-vaulted techno roots can sometimes be detected in the unconventional backing effects and the way the last song degenrates into brain-frazzled bleepery at the death- all of which help put paid to any chance of this album being easily pigeonholed in terms of style.

Lyrically too Radiator is superb with a ready supply of wit and a wide range of targets- topics include the birth of Einstein and the relation of Che Guevara thereto, the danger of one's cat or goat being devoured by a huge Latin American bat, a Welsh-language plea for a long haircut (Torri Fy Ngwallt Yn Hir) and plenty more besides.

Even now it's got a few birthdays behind it, Radiator still sounds fresh and exciting. It is a fine example of the surreal and wonderful world of the Furries and there's just so much going on it stands up very well to repeat listening. Great band, great songs, great attitude. Go on, you know you want to. Soy super bien.

Hungry?
If, in an unusual twist of fate, albums were to become pizzas, Radiator would be some sort of 'Ultimate-Supreme-Monster Pizza' type-affair, piling all of the juiciest toppings, however diverse, onto a lovingly hand-baked deep-pan base. Thus we have the chunky bacon rock 'n' roll of Chupacabras or the juicy pineapple pop of She's Got Spies, allied to the spicy beef and onion chanting of Hermann Loves Pauline. Even the anchovies found at the end of the album, when Mountain People descends into ear-battering techno anarchy, seem to be the final ingredient needed to make things just right. A feast for the ears, proving that in the right hands more definitely is more.

Every time I look around me everything seems so stationary
If SFA's debut Fuzzy Logic flirted with a variety of musical genres, then Radiator, its follow-up, has a full-blown affair with them. The songwriting has improved markedly (compare, say, the acid-glam of Hermann Loves Pauline to the Quo-glam of God! Show Me Magic) and has greater depth (similarly, compare the wistful beauty of Demons to the relatively airy-fairy Gathering Moss).

Perhaps the best illustration of SFA's unconventional approach comes at Radiator's conclusion, when the psychedelic folk of The Mountain People inexplicably mutates into pumping techno. It's but one of countless inspired moments on a magnificent LP by one of the best bands on this planet. Assuming, that is, that they really are of this planet...