How Super Furry Animals Made It Into Parliament
In 2000 Super Furry Animals’ fourth album Mwng, which was sung entirely in Welsh, was mentioned in the House of Commons and set the stage for them to be spokespeople for the language. However, as they explain ahead of its reissue, they “ran a mile” from it all. Jamie Fullerton hears about the groundbreaking album, and explains why its cult legacy stands firm.
An early day motion in the House of Commons, tabled on June 6th 2000 by Plaid Cymru MP Elfyn Llwyd, reads as so: “That this House congratulates Super Furry Animals on their chart topping new album, Mwng; notes that Mwng is the best-selling Welsh language album of all time; and notes that the Welsh language is re-establishing itself as a central part of popular youth culture and that this album is a celebration of Welsh culture embracing the new wave of confidence in the Welsh nation.”
It’s unlikely that when the Furries were bashing out their fourth album Mwng, in a few days in a cheap Cardiff studio, they expected it would end up being mentioned in Parliament as “chart topping.” Following the release of Guerilla, the five-piece’s polished third album, they were going back to basics. They tacked together a clutch of songs front-man Gruff Rhys had written in the band’s native language of Welsh, and set it for release on their own record label before planning to move on to bigger, poppier things.
Some thought they were being awkward by following up the Top 10-grazing Guerilla in this way. After all, their previous 10 singles had all gone Top 30 in the UK. But the reality was that the songs had come to Rhys after the liquidation of their previous label Creation and before they joined Epic Records, allowing them a brief period of complete freedom.
“It was just circumstances rather than a commercial decision,” says keyboard player Cian Ciaran. “But I remember someone saying it could be commercial suicide.” “We just wanted to make a coherent record,” says Rhys. “Welsh is our first language. By the time we started we had loads of Welsh language songs, enough for an album, so we thought it would be good to get them together.”
The stage was built for us to become spokespeople for the Welsh language. We ran a mile.
Musically, the album, which is being reissued on May 1st ahead of Super Furry Animals’ first gigs in six years, was a triumph. Following the band’s jumpy, riff-heavy 1996 debut album Fuzzy Logic, the more expansive 1997 album Radiator and the more expensive Guerilla, released in 1999, this new minimalist approach felt like a dramatic about turn. Yet the album was stripped-back and raw rather than bargain bin lo-fi, with the band’s insuppressible sense of melody shining through the likes of screwball punk swirl “Ysbeidiau Heilog” (which translates as “Sunny Intervals”).
However, the somberness of tracks such as stretched closer "Gwreiddiau Dwfn/Mawrth Oer Ar y Blaned Neifion" (“Deep Roots/Cold March On Neptune”) and “Y Gwynen lau” (“Liverface”) made it perhaps their most emotionally deep album, regardless of whether most of their fans could understand a word of it or not. Released at a time when British guitar rock was characterised by the tissue-thin campfire emotion of Coldplay and Travis, it sounded particularly special.
Rhys has compared non-Welsh speaking fans’ love of Mwng to his own liking of Nirvana. “I don't understand most of their lyrics ‘cos he's just screaming away, but I just understand the frustration and the passion in his voice,” he said in 2009. “If you don’t understand the lyrics you can still understand what the melody is doing and the emotion,” he says now. “Also, musically it came from our love of Anglo-American music. There’s nothing particularly indigenously Welsh there. It’s westernised guitar pop, sung in the Welsh language.”
The British public seemed to hear little in the way of a barrier, though: in May 2000, a time when you actually had to sell more than 150 album copies to go Top 20, Mwng hit number 11 in the Official UK Album Chart. This prompted Elfyn Llwyd, then Plaid Cymru’s elected MP for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy, to praise them in the House of Commons for “embracing the new wave of confidence in the Welsh nation.” It was a time when the Welsh language was spoken by around 450,000, out of Wales’s population of 3 million (the numbers have dropped since then). “The stage was built for us to become spokespeople for the Welsh language,” says Rhys. “We ran a mile.”
The band refused to follow this unexpected path of opportunity by keeping quiet, and limiting their touring to mainly the US, Japan and a few UK festivals. They didn’t see the album as political in any way, and were wary of it being turned into a calling card for a country-wide cultural renaissance it was not designed to represent. “We’d made a very personal album and we were quite shy,” Rhys says. “We didn’t even tour it in Wales. Yes, we were happy that a Welsh language album had done well, but it’s not an album of fiery political speeches. If it had been maybe we would have embraced that aspect, but it wasn’t the right record for it.”
Llwyd, who is due to stand down from Parliament after next month’s UK general election, says he has no regrets about praising the Furries despite their response. “With the band having made it big, for them to release a Welsh-language album did a lot for the language and brought profile to the country,” he says. “I respect them greatly for doing it. I wasn’t saying there was anything political in the album’s tone. Use of language is not political per se, but recognition for singing in your first language, as opposed to another language that could bring you more profit, is praise-worthy. They expressed their natural thought through Welsh. It’s not at all political, and it’s all the better for it.”
Pete Fowler, the band’s long-term friend and the man behind the Mwng cover art, was brought up in Cardiff. He agrees with Llwyd about the album arriving at a time when confidence in the Welsh language was being reclaimed.
“When I was at school people used to take the piss out of Welsh,” he says. “People were almost embarrassed about the language and it was the butt of a lot of jokes, sheep shagging and all that. The people who did bang on about the language and the culture were quite nationalistic and that always feels uncomfortable. Whereas from around the time Mwng came out, there was a resurgence helped by the media, such as the rise of the BBC’s presence in Wales.”
Rhys says that despite feeling queasy about being a Welsh language poster boy, he was gracious enough to accept the Parliamentary congratulations. “Plaudits from politicians felt a bit uncomfortable, but I do really like Elfyn. He seems like one of the good guys,” he says. “So the band laughed about it in the end. It was one of those weird things that happens: like a character in Brookside wearing a Super Furry Animals t-shirt, or something. You take it, and it’s funny, but you don’t pat yourself on the back for it.”
Not that the band were wary of expressing a bit of politically charged fire when they did want to. Their glorious, expletive-laden 1996 single “The Man Don’t Give A Fuck” was often accompanied by devilishly edited montage videos of then-world leaders George Bush and Tony Blair during gigs in the noughties. But it wasn’t their style to falsely wave a flag for a cause ultimately unrelated to Mwng, especially when it was one Rhys didn’t believe needed prioritising in 2000.
Super Furry Animals have always seen themselves as interested in the world, rather than just Wales.
“When people sung in Welsh in the ’60s and ’70s, there were campaigns to have parity for the Welsh language,” he says. “But by the time we came of age, a lot of those battles had been won by musicians such as Daffyd Iwan [who was head of Plaid Cymru from 2003-2010]. “By the time we came around, the battles for Welsh identity weren’t as focused on the language. They were focused on devolution and a political identity for Wales. It was exciting for us to share stages with people like 60 Foot Dolls from Newport, who sang in English. And Manic Street Preachers: their political and cultural identities were completely Welsh even though, where they came from [Blackwood], the language had died.”
The bottom line: Super Furry Animals have managed got their identity across to the wider world by just being themselves. As Fowler says, “The band portray their identity in such a perfect way – they’re never flag-waving despite being Welsh and proud to be Welsh. They’ve always seen themselves as interested in the world, rather than just Wales.” Mwng has a special place in the hearts of Super Furry Animals’ fans and stands out as one of the most interesting achievements of one of Britain’s most intriguing bands. But perhaps the best examples of the album’s cult legacy can be found further afield than Westminster – much further afield.
“When we toured Mwng in Japan, the crowds sung back all the Welsh lyrics,” says Ciaran. “We sold the record with English and Japanese translations there, so it was bizarre to hear. We also met a Japanese professor who had 20 students at a university he taught Welsh to. He came to Wales in the 1970s, fell in love with the culture and the people, took that back with him, then picked up the language on repeat visits. He came to a show and, of course, we expected him to speak to us in Japanese, so when Welsh came out of his mouth it was pretty surreal.” Fowler also points to a scene in Rhys’ 2014 film American Interior, in which a girl from Missouri shows off her mastery of the language. “There’s a bit where a black American girl in her 20s is speaking and learning Welsh,” he says. “There are these kids in Middle America, learning Welsh because of the band and Mwng. It’s pretty amazing, really.”
