In 1996, I began visiting another planet when an album called "Fuzzy Logic," by an unknown Welsh band called Super Furry Animals, opened up a wormhole in my mind which enabled me to cross into a weird mangalike dimension whenever I switched on my stereo. Oh, and also I got a name for this column.
"Fuzzy Logic" was a riotous explosion of pop-punk-folk psychedelia with songs about alien abductions and hamsters generating electricity by spinning on their wheels. It was the best album of 1996. Follow-up "Radiator" was my favorite album of 1997, and last year's B-sides and obscurities compilation "Out Spaced" demonstrated that here was a band that seemed incapable of writing a poor song.
On their new album "Guerrilla" they've abbreviated their name to SFA, and when I trudged home with the record under my arm I was concerned. SFA sounds like some boy- or girl-band collective, like NKOTB (New Kids on the Block) or TLC. Or TQ. Or even U2. URGH!