Review: Super Furry Animals @ Maxwells, NJ

For a band whose twenty-year anniversary is rearing its head, come the 2010 marker, the Super Furry Animals kept is surprisingly fresh and innovative at their recent small club show at New Jersey’s Maxwell’s. Their time together over the years has only strengthened their on stage presence, as they have a bond that only a band who has been together nearly two decades can have.

Playing smaller shows stateside forced the Furries to tone down their usually visual shows, allowing the music to stand out on its own. The only visual aid at the at capacity Maxwell’s were gigantic cue cards instructing the audience as to what to do, or what was going on.

Having recently released their ninth studio album, Dark Days/Light Years, the Super Furry Animals have quite a substantial catalogue of music to choose from when creating their set lists. As sometimes solo artist and lead singer, Gruff Rhys noted, they played the exact same set list the night before at New York’s Highline Ballroom, but with more energy in New Jersey, as Maxwell’s fed them before they performed, a standard practice at the venue.

While playing a twenty-song set would, for most bands, contain nearly every song they have, for Super Furry Animals, it barely made a dent in their catalogue. Between the music and on stage banter, their set was nearly two hours long, a rarity these days, but for their die-hard fans, that’s what they expect. While the set list was comprised of mostly songs off their newest album, they did play most of their hits, which resulted in audience sing-a-longs, and a couple hundred smiling faces.

Although there were a few technical problems, mostly in the beginning of the night with a late start and then on drums, the audience and band pulled through them together for a night of atmospheric psychedelic pop, that only a group of five, somewhat furry, Welsh people could make!

Set list: 09/12/09

Slow
Rings
Juxta
Golden Retriever
Hallo
Mountain
Moped
Demons
Destroy You
Trams
Neil Diamond
Flip Flop
Pric
Ble
International
Neo Con
God
CNG
Man Don’t Give A…
Cosmic Trigger

(Sarah Pesin)