Pitchfork

Eccentric Welsh quintet Super Furry Animals are back at it with another album of skewed Britpop wonderment. And, with track titles like "'The Very Best of Neil Diamond'" and "Crazy Naked Girls", this one may be deemed wonky even by SFA standards. The as-yet-untitled release will enter the world digitally on March 16 via the band's website, before seeing a physical release on April 13 in the UK and April 21 in the U.S. via Rough Trade.

Fans of the band's mellower side may want to sit this one out. According to a statement from the band: "Even though it's still very melodic we thought we could leave off the acoustic ballads for the time being. And no country rock as Daf [Ieuan, drummer] has developed a pedal steel phobia. Which has confined the great Nashvillian instrument along with the saxophone to the banned instrument directive of the SFA board. There's only one slow number which isn't slow at all." Anyone who's seen SFA live and in person knows this band can shred-- even while wearing Power Ranger helmets.

Here's a tracklist for the currently untitled new LP featuring some amazing comments from the band about each song:

01 'The Very Best of Neil Diamond'
"It's about all these houses being destroyed by jets etc. Someone put a Neil Diamond tape on before hand, and you can still hear it playing through the rubble."
02 White Socks/Flip Flops
"It's a song by Bunf [Huw Bunford, guitarist] concerning the type of footwear one needs to write a good novel."
03 Inaugural Trams
"A celebratory anthem regarding the opening of a new tram line in a fictitious utopian mainland Europe town. Featuring a rap in German by a special guest."
04 Sounds Familiar
"It does. But not in the way you think!"
05 Cardiff in the Sun
"Doesn't happen often, would probably sound like this."
06 Where Do You Wanna Go?
07 LLiwiau LLachar
"These are twin songs. If they were cities they would probably be Minneapolis and St. Paul. Lliwiau Llachar means Intensely Bright Colours. With all the synth arpeggios and Daf going nuts on drums it's like the Who or something, would be great theme music for 'CSI Cardiff'."
08 Mountain
"A euphoric glam rock stomp by Cian [Ciaran, keyboardist] that sounds as big as the title, and concerns people turning molehills into extreme sport venues."
09 Moped Eyes
"We've been playing this song live for a couple of years, it's been called 'Hot Clubs' and 'Hot Nuts' in the past. You can see a crude early version on YouTube."
10 Inconvenience
"We've been playing around with this heavy guitar riff for a few years now. It's so heavy it features both Guto [Pryce, bassist] and Bunf on two duelling bass guitars."
11 Crazy Naked Girls
"Bunf wrote this tribute to a Cardiff bar he used to drink in before re-development. It's now a block of unsold 'luxury' flats. It's a song in three parts."
12 Earth
"Anyone who attended a SFA gig on the Hey Venus! tour would know this song. It features very distinct audience participation. You can see numerous versions of it performed from Tokyo to California and beyond on YouTube ."
13 Prick
"This song is built on Cian's Moog groove and builds and builds into a great big house or castle of noise."