Super Furry Animals - Rings Around The World

8.0 - Wales - 2001

While the Super Furry Animals were arguably the best band to emerge from the Britpop scene of the '90s, there's a curious flaw to many of their albums, one that is ably demonstrated on this, their fifth long player. For the first half at least, Rings Around The World delivers a series of exquisitely crafted pop gems. "Alternate Route To Vulcan Street" (ostensibly inspired by signage from some Vancouver roadworks) starts things off with some laidback Rhodes-based mellow psychedelia before "Sidewalk Serfer Girl" dramatically picks up the pace with its frenetic juxtaposition of punky fuzz-tones, jungle-inspired beats, and graceful harmonies. Near title track "(Drawing) Rings Around The World" takes a standard-issue rock riff and dresses it up in just the right amount of psychedelic goofiness. "It's Not The End Of The World" is another fine SFA ballad in which they invoke the ghosts of ELO before "Receptacle For The Respectable" crams in a career's worth of ideas in just four and half minutes. 

And then, after the short instrumental "[A] Touch Sensitive", things go south. The second half of the album is full of mid-tempo filler. "Shoot Doris Day" is all bombast with no core and "No Sympathy" is just a bunch of tedious waiting around for the big techno crescendo (which itself is rather tedious, too). Easily the worst offender, "Presidential Suite" has a decent enough melody in the chorus, but its straight-faced recap of the Monica Lewinsky scandal was already horribly dated in 2001 and is worse now. Fortunately, the slinky subversive pop single "Juxtaposed With U", in which the SFAs engage in some ironic sexiness, and the psych-country epic "Run! Christian, Run!" save the day, or at least mitigate the damages. While the truly excellent first half of the album brings the average up enough to make Rings Around The World a good, indeed very good, record, you can't help but think that with a little trimming to the second side (or substituting in the excellent b-side "Tradewinds"), this album could've been a masterpiece.