Week 7 (Bonus) - Radiator by Super Furry Animals

Guest Listener - Neil Atkinson





Who’s Neil Atkinson when he’s at home?

Neil presents @theanfieldwrap podcast, @theriderpodcast and when he’s not presenting podcasts he also writes and produces films.

The Anfield Wrap podcast is the biggest one club podcast in the world and is currently listened to by approximately 100,000 people a week. That’s 100,000 people listening to other people talking out loud about football. Who knew?

He’s also a dear friend, a purveyor of fine knitwear and one of our favourite writers

He tweets at @Knox_harrington

What great album has he never heard before?

Radiator by Super Furry Animals

Released on the 25th August 1997

Before we get to Neil, here’s what Martin thinks of Radiator

The music industry is on the one hand brutal, on the other hand silly.

And it was never more so than in August 1997

Let’s go back, in imaginary time machines.

Oasis are about to release their third album in the midst of the media invention that we now know as “Cool Britannia”. It’s all everyone writes about, it’s all everyone talks about. You remember the script - New Labour, her in a Union Jack Dress and Blur v Oasis. Roll up Roll Up, it’s Blur v Oasis. Cool Britannia is riding a wave and it’s peaking in August 1997

It’s peaking because this new album is coming, this highly anticipated “next phase”. Pens are poised, there’s a need to document this. But it isn’t straightforward, it’s never straightforward.

The previous Oasis album, What’s the Story Morning Glory, released in much gentler waters, had received a bit of a mauling from the “serious” music press.

They listened to it and declared it average, on the whole they declared it just average. But then it sold and it sold and it sold. And, in their minds, this made them look silly. They had been lukewarm on a phenomenon and this phenomenon sold papers.

And this it’s why it isn’t straightforward, this is why it’s never straightforward.

You see, the “serious” music press don’t like to look silly. That’s why they’re the “serious” music press. They also don’t like to be ignored, they need a circulation, as big as possible, as profitable as possible.

So, when Be Here Now was eventually released it was met with near universal critical acclaim. We’ll show them, the “serious” music press thought. We’ve got yer this time. Don’t worry Britpop, we’ve boxed it.

Q Magazine gave it 5 out of 5 and compared it to The Beatle’s Revolver.

The Telegraph described it as “a great rock record”.

Charles Shaar Murray, a very “serious” music journalist indeed, liked it so much so that when he reviewed it he temporarily turned Jamaican - ”This is Oasis’s world domination album. Dem a come fe mess up de area seeeeeeerious”

If you say it enough, maybe it becomes so. But then sometimes it doesn’t become so, because it isn’t straightforward, it’s never straightforward.

Despite selling millions of copies, mostly in the first 2 weeks of release, it turns out that most people thought Be Here Now was average. People listened to it and declared, on the whole, it was just average.

Within 2 years, it was reported that Be Here Now was the record most sold into second hand stores. The “serious” music press had got it wrong again.

And that was really that. 8 million people bought an album that, in the end, they thought just wasn’t very good. Britpop never found it’s second gear and the wave crashed into the rocks of an industry that didn’t know how to sustain it. It was over. Suddenly it was un-cool Britannia. So un-cool that attention turned to New York, turned to where the “new rock revolution” was about to invented.

R.I.P Britpop. All the best.

But there’s a twist. It could have all been different. The solution was right under their noses.

Just four days after Be Here Now (FOUR DAYS!), the same record company (THE SAME RECORD COMPANY!) released the second album from Super Furry Animals. And that album was Radiator.

But unless you were in the know you didn’t know, because everyone else was writing about that, because everyone else was reading about that. And all the money that was being spent was being spent on that.

So you’re left to imagine what would have happened if the people that told you to listen to that had told you to listen to this. What would have happened if the fuss that was made about that was made about this.

You’re left to imagine how Britpop would have charged into 1998, how a scene could have evolved rather than wasting away. How everyone would have dressed differently and how everyone would have realised that an album that made you want to do drugs was so much better than an album made by people on drugs.

But none of that happened because the music industry is on the one hand brutal, on the other hand silly.





The Critics on Radiator

Pitchfork gave it 8.6 out of 10

Stylus Magazine named Radiator in a list of “Ten essential albums” released by Creation Records in a 2003 article about the label.

Other than that, reviews are relatively scarce. It’s not even on Metacritic despite it featuring 6 other albums by the Super Furry Animals.

So, over to you Neil. Why haven’t you listened to it? WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?????

What’s wrong with me? Complex this one because I loved Fuzzy Logic, their debut album. I really loved Fuzzy Logic. And to drill down into Fuzzy Logic my favourite song was “God! Show Me Magic” which was the first song. And my favourite part of that song is the opening and the piano. So this thing had happened in my brain where the first minute of the first song on the first Super Furry Animals album became my thing. I suspect there are few individual minutes of pop music I’ve ever listened to more.

All this is comparable with The Three Eps by The Beta Band. It’s their debut album too, the best EP is the first EP, the best song on the first EP is the first song and the first minute is the best minute. I listened to their debut album. And it was bloody rubbish. I mean, The Beta Band told me it was bloody rubbish before it came out. I listened to it once and concluded they were right.

My friend John Gibbons has this thing that maybe all bands should only release one album and then be forced to start again. I think there is something in this in general. This isn’t about being a snob obscurantist or anything like that, just the visceral pleasure of a debut album is something to behold.

Regardless, this personal weirdness can’t be the only reason I haven’t listened to Radiator. Because I have listened to Mwng. I have listened to Rings Around The World. I am fond of Phantom Power, which a lot of people aren’t. I love Gruff Rhys’s Candylion album and I’ve enjoyed the Neon Neon stuff. Yet Radiator hasn’t happened.

I don’t know if this is another bit of weirdness, but I’m not a completist. I’ve never really felt the need to listen to everything an artist does. I like OK Computer a great deal (more on that in a second) but nothing could compel me to listen to Pablo Honey. I think lots of music fans are completist types. The need to hear and possess everything from a band they like drives them. It doesn’t drive me. If you click on this link here – http://www.albumoftheyear.org/ratings/1-pitchfork-highest-rated/1997/1 – you see Spiritualised at the very top for 1997 and I reckon it deserves to be there. I loved and still love that record. I must have listened to it a thousand times.

I’ve never listened to the two albums which precede it, Pure Phase and Lazer Guided Melodies. I’m just not bothered. How could they be better than Ladies And Gentlemen…? Not happening. I had that moment of connection. If need be, something will happen and I’ll find a new connection point.

Even allowing for this too, how can there be no Radiator? Because I really, really haven’t listened to it. I really haven’t heard a bit of it. On listen one I was determined to remember the singles. I was listening to Mark and Lard, listening to the Evening Session, listening to John Peel in 1997. I must have heard something, a single, something. I must have. Yet nothing. No recollection of a single thing. Demons is ever so slightly familiar. A memory from another room. But it was the fourth single off the album.

Basically I think I haven’t listened to it because no one ever told me to. And if you click that link above, 1997 was a strong year. Beyond Spiritualised and Radiohead there are big releases from Bjork, Nick Cave, Mogwai, Yo La Tengo, Pixies, Grandaddy, Supergrass, Elliott Smith, Portishead, Blur and The Prodigy that I can remember listening to on my terms, before we get to the axis ofevil that was The Verve and Oasis that was lashed endlessly down our necks from our sixth form common room. I didn’t really like much of that but was endlessly subjected to it to the point where I find it difficult to appreciate the odd good song.

So if the radio wasn’t telling me to listen to Radiator – and it just can’t have been, not emphatically enough – if the music press wasn’t telling me to listen to Radiator – see above from Ruth and Martin - and my mate Greg wasn’t telling me to listen to Radiator (and he wasn’t) then I wasn’t listening to it. I wasn’t listening back to it, I wasn’t eagerly awaiting it because I had God! Show Me Magic, I had all these other records to listen to and I was happy.

Happy I tell you. A perfect storm of happiness.



A perfect storm of happiness

You’ve now listened to it, at least 3 times, what do you think?

I’m a fucking idiot. I thought I was happy. I wasn’t anywhere near as happy as I could have been.

But forget me for a second. I am merely one man in this. We all aren’t anywhere near as happy as we could have been. This album has bangers. It has singles in abundance. It has jokes and imagination. This is an album which is chockful of personality, a band being who they actually are as people. It runs a gamut from the Pulp-ish quirkyness of Hermann ♥’s Pauline and heads towards the social gorgeousness of Download. It’s got a fantastic vibe and a faith in itself. It’s an album you should all have been screaming at me to listen to, because you were as well, because we all were. This is British pop music at its best, some of it made beautifully in Welsh.

In that list of records above, it stands out because while there are some excellent records in there, there aren’t any with the rollercoaster wit of this one. The Be Here Now comparison made above kills you because Be Here Now is leaden steps versus Radiator’s dancing shoes. It flits brilliantly, from the swirl of The Placid Casual to the backing vocals on She’s Got Spies to the sheer enormity of the closer Mountain People.

Just listen to it. It is easy enough without me naming the songs!

Despite the lament above I wonder if the album and its vibe have lived on under the radar. Often when presenting The Rider I pick a psychedelic track by a band invariably from Melbourne and so often I present this stuff saying “not what I’d usually like, but it’s full of ideas/tight/visceral” to the extent that I now have to acknowledge this is what I like. It’s easy, for example, to draw lines between this and Courtney Barnett, for example. Throughout this album I’m reminded of so many of those bands and acts now, while in 1997 the mainstream psych was thought to have quite narrow parameters. Thankfully we’re all past genre now so we can relax.

“All past genre now.” A thought which makes you think about the Super Furry Animals and what they brought to the party. They may have been ahead of their time not in the sense of being Moroder style sonic pioneers, but in the sense of whether or not the world was ready for them and what they were pinching to place into a new whole. Now that the anthemic and the monolithic is far rarer in British musical culture, five to ten years ago could have been a far better time for them to start showing their magic. However, in the mainstream and with the lads with guitars in the mainstream especially, too much of it is too obvious, too straightforward. Not enough risks being taken. Not enough people trying to be super nor furry.

Would you listen to it again?

I would listen to it again. Before I listen to almost anything else from 1997. Spiritualised though. God, that was a goodun.

RAM Rating – 8.5/10

Guest Rating – 9/10

Overall – 8.75/10

So that was a bonus edition for week 7 and that was Neil Atkinson. Turns out he loved Radiator and managed to do that without even turning Jamaican. It also turns out that not enough people were strapped to a chair and forced to listen to Radiator by Super Furry Animals. But now, because of this review, that will happen. Mark my words, this will happen. And the Super Furry Animals will be dead pleased about this. Mark my words, they’ll be dead pleased.



So find a chair, strap yourself in and have a listen