Rings Around The World

Liked this a good amount surprisingly!

Dearly love the Furries, but this isn’t their best - most of the ideas having already been done (better) elsewhere. Unless we’re doing the entire back catalogue, debatable as to whether it belongs on the list.

Das Cover verspricht psychodelische Musik, es enthält viel mehr. Britpop trifft auf Elektronik und Experimental Musik?

I cant take this seriously anymore 💩🤢🤮🚽

da ascoltare albums loro: Phantom Powe e Fuzzy Logic

As someone who's car can occasionally make weird songs, this was not the album to listen to in said car. The actuall music? Eh don't really have much to say. 4/10

Huge surprise. Magnificent

Ohhhh man that was bad. Yikes.

yuck Best Song: Presidential Suite Rating: 3.5/10 Stars: 2

This music was annoying.

Sounds like beatles/60s type melodies in an alt rock album sound. Electronic nuggets of sound hidden within. Strong beatles vibes from "its not the end of the world" Its certainly captured my interest. Vocalist sounds dangerously close to damon albarn sometimes. But not like a copy of albarn. Something quite poppy about the melodies. Especially Receptacle for the respectable (I liked it). The song then descends into a heavy metal sound. Massive switch up. Hard to pinpoint this album to a certain genre or thing because it keeps changing, and thus my initial opinions and expectations are also changed. For example, a really cool electro instrumental/interval "Touch Sensitive" shows its more than just a bog standard rock record. "Shoot doris day" a wee bit of humour to the album, the group don't take themselves so seriously… Generally, this feels fresh to listen to. "no sympathy" was a slow ballad, initially wasn’t a fan of this. It's almost like the song could read my mind and detected my boredom because of the massive switch up! It changed into this cool electronic hipp-hopesque mashup instrumental. Really neat. The album knows how to keep me on its toes. At risk of boring its listener, it changes accordingly. Chaemelonic in its genre switches. Overall, it's been a mixed bag of songs, but I enjoyed how the album played with my expectations. This one is a grower, and I think I could appreciate it more on further listens. Nice introduction to the band.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would sound like if Jarvis Cocker was the front man of some of Blur’s later albums this will give you that.

Decent enough - felt like a concept album. Very listenable though

Interesting album, some pretty good, and some less so tracks. There's enough uniqueness, but just barely.

Not for me. 1/5

weird, can't really say anything. I heard I think every genre under the sun in this album. Though "Juxtapozed with U" is really good with its Philly soul. Will move past a 2 I bet on more listens.

The consistent “failing” with this list/book is that it’s blatantly obvious that the authors are British, evidenced by the sheer volume of “just okay” British albums that are included on here. This album is an addition to that long long list.

It is fine music from the early 2000s in England. Some of the tracks I liked, but most of the other ones I could take or leave. I think a 4.5/10 is about right. Top song... Juxtaposed with U

I was dreading more generic 90s pish, but this was fun

More Britpop. Yay. What little stand out is annoying. 2.5

Backstage at an SFA show one time, I, budding booking agent, hit up Huw telling him we could get whatever drugs he needed and he proceeded to produce the largest overstuffed gallon bag of marijuana I'd ever seen pre-legalisation. So that's how that went. Love this record.

music is love

I am immediately reminded of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. If you haven't seen the movie, it's a parody of other music movies in which a musician indulges in a life of excess, takes a lot of drugs, finds his world and relationships falling apart, and has a manic epiphany for an album. In the studio, there's his regular band who are very confused, an entire orchestra, tribal African musicians, and goats. The studio is completely full and everyone thinks Dewey's plan is insane. After many takes, Dewey says he's still not satisfied with how the song is sounding and calls for "10,000 didgeridoos!" This album should be called 10,000 Didgeridoos. I'm not sure how you can fit so many instruments, so much production, and so many theatrical changes in an album and still have it turn out this mediocre. There are a moments of "oh, this isn't bad," but "this isn't bad" isn't what I'm listening to 1,000+ albums to hear. I'm definitely not here for an INSANE series of non-sequiturs. It sounds like schizophrenia. "Hi, I'm Crazy Pat, and these guys are The Asylum, and we're here to play what the illuminati tells us to play" ⭐⭐.49

My second album by Super Furry Animals…..why? This one is not as unpleasant as the last but absolutely nothing stands out or is appealing.

supaaa

Mr Dimery would’ve been better off making a “1001 Britpop albums to listen to before you die”. Pleasantly surprised by this one, thought it was going to be more electronic based on my first impression of the album art but I think it toed the line of too modern pretty well Playlist add: “Juxtaposed with U”

Both mayo and chocolate ice cream can be great, but maybe not together, and not like this.

Pretty dull stuff, over-produced.

"Psychadelic" was such a poison in the 90s/00s they would take these awesome pop songs and run it through stupid filters to make it sound like it was recorded underwater. Your songs are good already you don't have to impress me with your pedals! Of Montreal gets to be psychadelic while being poppier and more restrained with the production - take note Animals.

Provisional rating until I actually finish it, but that I went "eh, I don't know about today for this one" tells you something

An authentically multi-genre album, Rings Around The World matches the joy of The Beach Boys & the absurdism of The Flaming Lips, making for a surprisingly gorgeous work of art. 'Sidewalk serfer girl's searching for a dream / Paraglide from space die your bungee best'; 'Turn all the hate in the world / Into a mocking bird.' I had my reservations going in since I was not too impressed w/ Fuzzy Logic, but this succeeds on several levels, the main ingredient being that it's ne'er, e'er boring, e'en if there are tracks & sounds I'm not too keen on. Released in 2001, Rings Around The World is the final vestige of the optimism that ruled so much of the 90s aesthetic. It is almost too long - almost - but it keeps changing, & so I remain invested.

this was sick

There were some good moments here, to the point that I thought it might end up garnering a 3 or even a 4 a few times. Every good moment, though, was lost in, obscured by, or unceremoniously blasted away by some complete non sequitur. I'm all for the eclectic blending of styles and ideas, but this is borderline schizophrenic. If you took ten accomplished musicians from ten different genres, asked them to collect all of their unfinished musical thoughts over the course of a year, and then threw all of those vignettes together in completely random order, what came out would probably still be more cohesive than this album. I routinely found myself becoming frustrated, confounded, or just flat angry as various enjoyable passages devolved into nonsense. Though, even the best moments felt distinctly saccharine. People keep discussing how talented these guys are, and I don't doubt that, but a huge part of being an artist is understanding how to edit your creative impulses. Any evidence of that skill is utterly unapparent here. I guess it did evoke a strong emotional reaction, so perhaps that makes it art. Can't see myself revisiting, though.

Alternate Route to Vulcan Street, Sidewalk Serfer Girl, It’s Not the End of the World?, [A] Touch Sensitive, Juxtapozed with U

Lots of different sounds. Like the electronic bits with the guitars. Good album.

Curious. The two Super Furry Animals albums in the book were released in 1996 and 2001. The final years of my studies and the first few years of my working life. During those later years, I suddenly had a lot more money available to spend on music. I had a subscription to *Oor*. I went to concerts. I listened to Studio Brussel. I was thoroughly *into* alternative music, having got into it during my student days, particularly British, Belgian and Dutch stuff. Super Furry Animals are a—sort of, you could argue about it to some extent—British alternative band. From Wales, to be precise, and I wouldn’t want to offend anyone. I have absolutely no memory of this band. Yes, the name vaguely rings a bell, and I associate it with that period. Above all, I seem to remember some confusion with that other ‘Super’ band, [Supergrass](http://ivo-habets.nl/114-supergrass-i-should-coco-1995-9-10/), whom I do know and like a lot better . Oops, spoiler alert. Well, you can tell that from the number four in the title above, too. I simply cannot remember ever having heard any music by this band, not even after listening to this album a fair number of times. And that’s pretty strange, because I was practically standing right next to them. The people around me, the *scene* I was loosely part of, were precisely the sort of audience this band appealed to. But nope, doesn’t ring a bell. This may be partly explained by the band’s rather pronounced electronic sound. Spoiler alert once again: that’s also the main reason I dislike this album, and sometimes quite intensely. Some of the production choices are downright incomprehensible to me. Let’s cut straight to the chase: ‘No Sympathy’. Somewhere along the way, some truly unbelievably ugly electronics make their entrance, and the song ends in an electronic bombast that amounts to a terrorist attack on anything remotely worthwhile or meaningful inside your head. My God, this is so utterly dreadful that if I had to give the song a score, even zero would seem generous. I’m ill at the moment, my head is completely stuffed with snot, and this is unbearable. Even [The Prodigy](http://ivo-habets.nl/4-the-prodigy-the-fat-of-the-land-1997-6-10/) doesn’t come close when it comes to this kind of overwhelming, ugly electronic racket. We hear the same sort of ugly electronics in ‘Sidewalk Serfer Girl’, for example. And as for the bombast, this album sounds so overwhelmingly loud that I suspect it’s one of the [many examples](http://ivo-habets.nl/84-taylor-swift-1989-5-10/) of the [loudness wars](http://ivo-habets.nl/32a-junkie-xl-saturday-teenage-kick-1997-2-10/). \(Sure enough, Google AI immediately agrees with me, saying this album is one of the frequently cited examples.\) That extraordinary loudness, the electronics and, above all, those crackling fake drums aren’t the only ugly things on this album. Or rather, pretty much all of it is electronic misery. ‘Juxtapozed with U’ starts off horribly, with vocals that sound a bit like Auto-Tune, preceded by a melody that’s almost reminiscent of *The Love Boat*. Then, all of a sudden, you think you’re listening to Paul Anka or someone like that. I’ve just noticed, looking at Spotify on my desktop, that this is by far the album’s most-streamed track. So perhaps the audience for this band wasn’t quite the same as the audience I belonged to in 2001 after all. Then the album suddenly gets much better with ‘Presidential Suite’, which, oddly enough, brings Burt Bacharach to mind, thanks to the brass. It’s one of the songs on which vocalist Gruff Rhys sounds remarkably like Elvis Costello. But then comes the absolute highlight of the album, a song that towers above everything else, and I mean TOWERS: ‘Run! Christian, Run!’ This is bombastic, too, with an almost epic build-up and, yes, a loud finale, but this time there’s actual music involved. Yes, there’s electronics here as well, but they’re used effectively. It’s a little reminiscent of Sufjan Stevens, although he came along later. Another track worth mentioning in a positive light is the title track, ‘(Drawing) Rings Around the World’. This is where we can most clearly hear what I suspect to be the band’s main influence: ELO. It’s almost a rip-off, but the modernisation certainly hasn’t improved on the original. If I consciously steered clear of this band during my final formative years—before switching to jazz almost entirely for a long time—that was a very sensible decision. Back then, as someone who until recently had been a metalhead, this must have been completely not my thing. As an aside, on the subject of metal: the Wikipedia page for this album seriously lists death metal as one of the genres heard on it—or perhaps as one of its influences. Er... I know my way around that genre reasonably well, and I can’t hear any trace of it here. None whatsoever. Well done, young Ivo. It’s still not my thing.

Way too long.

A perfectly pleasant but average album.

I just can't get into them, I tried. The opener is a good electronic instrumental. Then the follow up is a rockier version of Blur with a good chorus. Then it goes down hill, the title track is naff britpop and it never recovers down the straight as I get bored. They are creative and eclectic but nah not all that.

I like this

A messy, noisy, psychotic, but somehow extremely poppy, album. Like if a Beatles album was recorded over a shifting radio station.

Сара 2,5 Марко 2,5

1000 genres in one, had some really great moments and some rather questionable moments thrown in. big up cymru my beloved

1) No Sympathy 2) Sidewalk Serfer Girl 3) Alternate Route To Vulcan Street Least Favourite: Justaposed With You

I feel Like I should Have enjoyed this more than I did It’s fine.

#249/1001 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 I want to live inside the brains of SFA. Its obviously a wild ride. First time listening although i've seen them live a couple of times and was familiar with a couple of tracks. This is a fantastic mash up of all sorts of genres with the absolute highlight being the sublime Juxstaposed With U. Best tracks: Juxtaposed With U, No Sympathy, Fragile Happines, Rings Around The World.

Fun enough background music but doesn't evoke anything. Good harmonies, lots of sounds, individual songs and album all packed with variety, so this feels a little harsh, but it just doesn't speak to me

Ganz gute Ansätze, aber über weite Strecken unspektakulär und etwas zu lang.

Sehr vielfältig und ein paar Songs, die mich echt überrascht haben.

Die Produktion ist toll, aber die Stimme nervt mich schnell.

Another album with some good stuff, but not sure why it's here. 2 seems a little harsh as it wasn't horrible.

An indie rock album that had a few decent songs, but never rose above the OK mark for me. Nothing super interesting here, especially in the vocal department where it was just a lot of soft singing. The decent songs had good guitars and drums, and the not so decent songs were very minimalist and boring. I'll give it a low 3/5

Ótimo album, bem criativo, nunca tinha parado muito pra ouvir prog-pop, e me surpreendi, cada faixa é extremamente diferente, sem medo de experimentar o máximo possível. O resultado é uma ótima experiência na qual você nunca cansa de ouvir.

So very clever and performative. Records like this always sound to me like a music student’s class project. I can see how someone would enjoy creating this and I assume one could enjoy appreciating it, but I do not enjoy listening to it. It’s not bad, it just does nothing for me.

Never got around to listening to this band, who if memory serves are one of the premier Welsh rock bands of the 90s (which is three quarters of the way to a punchline), and who at times sing in Welsh. Not gonna look that up, because I don't want to have to delete it if I'm wrong. It's fine. They come billed as a more quirky, indie spirited version of Britpop than the north star of Britpop comparisons, Oasis. I thought this sounded ar times like a not particularly successful Beta Band album (their self tiled from 1999, for example). There perhaps we have two ways of saying the same thing. I only finished this album through my commitment to this project -- curiosity about this band alone would not have sustained me. Which kind of says it all.

I think I'm going to develop a MadLib style review for the droves of britpop albums on this list. "I [past-tense verb] this album more than I expected. It vaguely reminded me of [other British artist] but was less [adjective]. This record was not overly [negative adjective] but also was not very [positive adjective]. I'll never listen to it again, but also wouldn't bother to turn it off if it were playing, because that would indicate a level of engagement I didn't feel." In this case: liked, Elvis Costello, interesting, offensive, gripping.

This is one of those quirky early 2000s records that covers different rock styles and genres, but has its cheesy moments. The production is okay overall and experimental, but the album in its entirety just isn't for me. It's a decent record still.

This one was all over the place, but enjoyable overall.

I totally misjudged Super Furry Animals. In my head, I had categorised them as some light entertainment - enjoyable, but not particularly interesting. A decent enough seventies sound, and that was about it. I was very, very wrong. The songs on “Rings Around the World” are indie pop on the surface, but something stranger and far more interesting on a subterranean level. What elevates everything miles above the simple and enjoyable melodies are the absolutely fascinating sonic textures used throughout. There are reverberating self-oscillating whooshes, programmed drum loops, delay and echo effects, vocoders, glossy synth textures… I could go on and on. But it’s all so unexpected and surprising. We’re constantly kept on our toes, never knowing what’s coming up next. “Sidewalk Serfer Girl” starts off sounding like a guitar-heavy indie pop song, before a drum machine mixes things up, and then halfway through, the melody switches unexpectedly to a searing sawtooth synth sound. The title song, “(Drawing) Rings Around the World” sounds like Hawkwind and The Beach Boys had an illegitimate song-child, where bright vocal harmonies are surrounded by the whoosh of a wind tunnel. “Touch Sensitive” is like a song from a different genre that drifted in by mistake. It feels more like hip-hop or electronica than any of the other songs on this album. “No Sympathy” starts off as a dark folk song, with even darker lyrics, before descending into a nutty sound-effect collage. “Run Christian, Run!” is a gorgeous, mellow song. A repeating riff starts off sitting buried in the mix, but grows in intensity, and becomes more and more drowned in spacey phaser effects. It's a sound that matches something Johnny Greenwood might have come up with on OK Computer, and coming from me, that's one of the highest compliments possible. Before this album came up in this list, I had already heard “Receptacle for the Respectable”. I had Shazam-ed it after hearing the song played on BBC 6 Music, wondering what the hell I'd just experienced. It’s so insane. It's a smorgasbord of different songs stitched together, morphing into something incredible at the end. Things build-up towards the end of the song to a proper rock-out, before everything collapses into itself, like a black hole imploding. It's mind-blowing and the best part of the album. Apparently Paul McCartney features on the song too… chewing celery and carrots. The Macca link is relevant. There’s a lot of similarities here to something The Beatles would have come out with around the Magical Mystery Tour period. There’s intense sonic experimentation, but nothing is taken too seriously. Irreverent humour front-and-center, but surrounded by intense musical innovation. I absolutely love it. 4.5 stars

I don't get it like in many ways I don't get the album, I don't get why it's on the list, I did not get the genre, I don't get the Super Furry Animals. Looking at the review spread it seems like I'm also not the only one who did not get this. I feel I should also note that I fucking "get" Throbbing Gristle.

this just felt messy and all over the place. if it was shorter it would probably have been more palatable but it’s not so…….. one star

Found it a bit boring 2.5

One really nice song in Run Christian Run. Not much else to remember

Better than expected given the band name

O álbum não é ruim. Músicas bem trabalhadas e tal... Só não é algo que curti tanto. Celest Phoenixcall.

Never heard of this band but I loved this album so creative and every song was unique I loved the electronic parts a lot

Boring Oasis/Radiohead imitation with some synthesizers that give some depth but result in a tedious experience.

Really enjoyed some of the songs and some really weren’t my thing and there were a few I thought I liked until they changed partway through. An interesting listen, but I don’t think I’d come back to the full album. Fav song: It’s Not the End of the World? Least fav: Sidewalk Serfer Girl

Had never heard of this band before now. Some decent sounding snippets in there but others feel like bad experimental Gorillaz. Specific rating - 3.5 Fav song - shoot Doris day Least fav- run Christian run

They're one of my aunt's favourite bands, so much so that she came to London to see their reunion tour (something notoriously difficult to get her to do). It's not at all what I expected and it's fun to imagine her in her 20s loving this album. I however do not love it- I kept liking starts of songs and then they'd get weird and annoying. Favourite song: Presidential Suite Least: No Sympathy

Have I listened to this album before No How familiar am I with this album Completely unfamiliar How do I feel about this artist? I have no idea who this is Pre-Listen Thoughts: This is one of those things, it could be a two star or a five star. I really have no way to predict it. This is a complete unknown for me so we’ll see what happens. Favorite track(s): Title track, No Sympathy Post-Listen Thoughts: I liked this quite a bit, a few parts dragged but I was mostly into it. Definitely will look up this artist.

Syntheciser Rock, 2001 -> 2

When I read the wiki blurb and saw this album was going to feature a mix of all these genres I expected it to be wackier. Like more akin to what the band Igorrr does. While there are some wacky moments to the back half, the majority of this album is just a mediocre prog rock album at best. 2.5 rounded down to a 2/5

Lots of cool sounds whizzing around on this record but do they really need to pile up like that on every song? The arrangements are gorgeous and meticulous, but trying to hear the song is a little like trying to find the keys you dropped in Versailles.

Orchestral freakout British pop. I hear echoes of bands ranging from the Beatles to ELO, Gorillaz (the singer sounds like Damon Albarn), Flaming Lips and Seals & Croft, with brief forays into trip hop, drum & bass, disco and a little death metal for good measure. So it feels a little overstuffed, like a band that can’t decide where to focus, even if there are definitely some good things stuffed in here.

Had never heard this band. Kinda all over the place, but appealing on first listen.

Quite varied

Singer reminds me of Peter Gabriel, while the sound overall makes me think of Flaming Lips. With elements of the Beatles. Is that their angle? They're trying to be a modern version of the Beatles? I can hear it- all the studio experimentation and odd instrumentation paired with the vocal harmonies and pop sensibility. It's fun so far. Ten tracks in, and they're really trying to show their range.... We get a Burt Bacharach-style pop tune with "Presidential Suite," which is sequenced right after the super-70s pop workout of "Juxtaposed"...... This album is all over the place, with one foot squarely in the past and one in the future. It does work for the most part...... Ok now we're getting a country-infused ballad. This is a well-produced album, with some strong songs. And while I might recommend this to a couple of folks that I know will enjoy this, I don't know when I'll ever put it on again. THREE STARS

Super Furry Animals aus Wales nahmen ihr fünftes Album 2000 an zwei denkbar unterschiedlichen Orten auf: im Monnow Valley Studio in Rockfield, wo vorher schon Queen und Oasis gearbeitet hatten, und im Bearsville Studio im US-Bundesstaat New York. Gemischt wurde in den Metropolis Studios in London – dann erschien das Album 2001 bei Epic Records, dem ersten Major-Label der Band. Man hört den Ortswechsel förmlich: walisische Folklore trifft auf Elektronik-Basteleien, dazwischen kippt vieles in breitwandigen Pop, ohne dass die Band lange bei einer Idee bleibt. Der Opener "Alternate Route to Vulcan Street" startet mit vokodierten Stimmen und Streichern und wird dann zum straffen Popsong – dieses Auf-und-Ab bestimmt das ganze Album. "Juxtapozed with U" flirtet mit Soul und Vocoder-Gesang und wurde die erfolgreichste Single der Band. "(Drawing) Rings Around the World" schiebt Glam-Rock-Gitarren unter einen Text über Umweltverschmutzung. "Presidential Suite" braucht über fünf Minuten, um irgendwo im Prog-Territorium zu landen. Und dann, mittendrin, "Miniature": vierzig Sekunden, mehr nicht – als hätte die Band kurz mit sich selbst gestritten, wie ernst man das Ganze eigentlich nehmen soll. Ein roter Faden fehlt eigentlich, und das ist vermutlich der Punkt. Gruff Rhys pendelt textlich zwischen politischer Beobachtung und Nonsens, die Produktion bleibt trotzdem klar und aufgeräumt, fast diszipliniert im Kontrast zu den vielen Richtungswechseln. Für ein Major-Label-Debüt ist das ziemlich unbequem gedacht – und genau deshalb hört sich das Album auch über zwanzig Jahre später noch nicht abgestanden an. Ein Album, das sich weigert, eines zu sein, und trotzdem zusammenhält.

Wtf compilation

3.5 - pretty good

Don’t want to

I really enjoyed this! It’s not the end of the world is so so good.

Jam band without the jam

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿Waw, cerddoriaeth wych o Gymru!🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 I had to look up where Super Furry Animals were from, and Cardiff somehow feels exactly right. 𝘙𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘈𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 is the kind of late-90s/early-2000s British indie pop that really works for me: melodic, playful, ambitious, and just strange enough. The album keeps throwing new ideas into the mix without ever sounding unfocused. There are big hooks, psychedelic touches, electronic details, and plenty of unexpected turns, yet it all still feels unmistakably like the same band. Inventive without becoming exhausting and catchy without playing it safe. This is how adventurous UK indie pop should sound.

Some alright songs but SO INCOHERENT! You can have a beautiful acoustic ballad right next to the world's most techno jargon

I have a memory of one of my skateboard friends in the early aughts playing 'Presidential Suite' for me because he thought the lyrics were so funny. If he hadn't pointed out the part I was supposed to hear I don't know if my attention span would have enabled me to hear it. These tracks just plod on for me. I had gotten it in my head at some point that this band was weirder but listening to this all the way through was honestly pretty boring. In terms of the recording quality, skill and performance it's probably 3 or 4 stars but in terms of how I feel about the songs it's a 2.

I'm mystified as to why such a basic ass band that sounds like fifty other bands on this list gets TWO albums but Tool has zero. Giving it a one star since the end No Sympathy annoyed the shit out of me.

Real long but actually pretty decent and got better as it went along.

Not bad but also not good or memorable

This is my first time listening and the electronic drum kit sounds stood out in every song. I loved the unique sound the samples lent to the rhythmic underpinning of every song, and how each song was different but internally repetitive enough that I was humming along by the end!

I can appreciate an album where the back half is way stronger. I am not into psychedelic music generally, but I liked a lot of the tracks here, e.g. "[A] Touch Sensitive".

Pretty meh

Nothing outstanding. Nothing too annoying. It was fine

Wow this is some fluffy shiet, not sure yet if it is on the right or wrong side of the weighing pan. I'm always applauding the effort however to create something unique and non-commercial, but it feels a little to uneven for me to revisit this extremely super furry mammals.

This is a band whose I only knew the name (indeed quite memorable) until a few weeks ago. Then this project proposed me Fuzzy Logic, which I found utterly unremakable (besides a couple of songs). This one is way more interesting with a good mix of invention/experimentation, pop melodies, genre variety. Still, I am not probably going to listen to it very often...

Really dull. No idea how this made it into the 1001 list. This is the first album here that I couldn't be bothered to listen to.

Juxtaposed with U is an absolute banger. Kinda forgettable otherwise. Did see these guys live a few times

Some songs were really great

Listens: 3 Standout Tracks: It's Not the End of the World?, Juxtapozed with U Okay, lets get some stuff out of the way. The band probably never predicted that the term Furry would go on to mean something entire different over the course of the past 20 years. But even still, terrible band name. Next, the album cover isn't much to write home about. Psychedelic, but lacking in meaning. Why the gold tooth, lightning bolts and skull? Meh. With the album composition, we're covering a lot of ground in a single album. Progressive rock, trip-hop, a weird song that devolves into some form of metal. If the Gorillaz never existed, Super Furry Animals could have possibly filled the spot. I could have even sworn that it sounded like Damon Albarn on one or two of the tracks. The song Juxtapozed with U (can I just say how much I loathe 90s and early 2000s "internet-style" shorthand writing in music track names) sounds like it could be off an Isley Brother's album soul track. There's even proper autotune... in the year 2000 long before autotune became popular. The whole album put together just makes for an exceptionally bizarre experience. I couldn't ever really anticipate where the album was going next. Kept me on my feet that's for sure. Especially when the death metal bit hit at the end of Receptacle for the Respectable. Should it be on the list? Sure. It's certainly unique. Categorically weird. Will I ever listen to it again? Probably not. I can listen to any number of other bands that focus on a particular genre, and do it better.