Search - Super Furry Animals :: Outspaced

A motley assortment that beats most of SFA's album tracks

John L Murphy | Los Angeles | 07/05/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I bought this years ago as an import before it was reissued, but the same tracks appear. Although my wife made me turn it off because it "sounds like the Moody Blues," it doesn't really. But Steely Dan, hip-hop/stoner funk, and surprisingly catchy guitar & keyboard-driven songs with Gryff Rhys' charming vocals (here largely in English) make this an largely enjoyable album, more weighted towards chugging tunes rather than pithier and quieter more recent efforts. They are growing out of their imitative stages here, and the songs drawn from 1994-8 show them pursuing, largely successfully, a more psychedelic-driven/fueled, happier yet not a novelty-tune muse. (There are, however, a couple of songs towards the start of "Outspaced" that I tend to skip as too adolescent or silly.



It's certainly much better than the dour if polished "Phantom Planet." The more raucous, but ingratiating texture of their early career blends with a more experimental side, akin more to "Mwng" than the more commercialized "Rings." For me, many of the albums SFA makes have not dug as deep a groove in my mind as this odds-and-sods anthology, which collects a strong argument that sums up at their best SFA's meandering appeal."