Northern Lites by Super Furry Animals
“IDON’T know if anyone would be allowed to make a record like that again,” marvels Guto Pryce, “especially at someone else’s expense. But Creation weren’t that concerned about commercial success – Oasis were paying the bills.”
In the summer of 1998, Super Furry Animals entered one of the country’s most luxurious studios, Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Box, near Bath; there, only pausing to watch Argentina’s World Cup matches, learn taekwondo and raid Gabriel’s wine cellar, they recorded their ambitious third album, Guerrilla, set for deluxe reissue this October. “The control room in Real World was like the starship Enterprise,” remembers Cian Ciaran, “the console was all around you rather than being long and flat. It had a sunken floor, with a glass wall and a small pond at the same level. It was like nothing we’d ever had before, and we stayed there for something stupid like nine weeks.”
Producing themselves, the group created a set of shiny, strange and subversive pop, incorporating influences from leftfield hip-hop, drum and bass and Tropicália. The latter was best showcased on the first single, “Northern Lites”, a kaleidoscopic calypso written by singer Gruff Rhys about the El Niño weather phenomenon and its sister effect, La Niña.
“I remember writing the lyrics for Guerrilla feeling very optimistic,” explains Rhys. “We wanted to make a bright-sounding, uplifting album but I don’t think we felt constrained
