Rings Around The World

Psychedelic, prog, folk, and electronic are melded with power pop and create a delicious sonic stew. For a first major label record, this one is pretty out there and I love that about it. Kind of like a more interesting Flaming Lips, these guys create cosmic rock like nobody else and II love how eclectic it is. It almost seems like a concept album but, if there is a theme that runs through it, it was lost on me. But who cares? I just got pleasantly lost in the music.

Really ambitious stuff, but you can afford to take big swings if you have pop sensibilities like these guys do. Consistently engaging with lots to come back to, cant believe this project is my first ever listening to them

Never heard them before but really enjoyed this. Not what I was as expecting and needs more time.

I’m very surprised. In theory, this is the kind of album I would (and usually) dislike. But it’s not been the case at all. Melodically, it is a very pleasant album, with some really wonderful melodies (although most are pretty silly, and still enchanting, if I may use the word "silly" to describe a melody). Also, there is a psychedelic touch that really complements this album really well. It’s not an absolute masterpiece, but it is great, such an enjoyable album to listen to.

Mom, can we have Blur? Mom: We have Blur at home. The Blur at home...

underrated band

Meh, not really my cuppa. But I'll give it 2 stars.

Not for me.

Never heard of them. Took a quick glance at reviews, I see there are fans as well as detractors, my hopes are not high. Track 1 is incoherent: 'tricky' but poor chord progression. Track 2 unconvincing music, silly lyrics, effects for no reason. Track 3, 'effects' at the end make it worse. Track 4 pretentious without gravitas. And so on. No Sympathy was mildly unpleasant to start with (provocative chorus clincher was not in the least supported by banal remainder of lyrics), but then when it went into the 'remix' part it became possibly the most annoying 'song' I have ever heard. This album is Bad, 1/10.

4 great great catchy 60's vibes song. Probably the best of the album. 5 very good aswell. love the brass and harmonica. 7 is has ELO vibes on it. Lovely. 9 is Neil Youngy sounding. A nice song but honestly quit stupid. Especially the horrendous electronic section by the end. 10 is also great apart from the unnecessary auto tune in the verses. I feel like the composition and delivery is influenced by Elvis Costello. And I finally got who the singer reminds me- Damon Albarn. Presidential suit another beautiful song. 12 grew on me as long as it lasted and became one of my favorites here. The closer is good and short as it needed to be. I don't know what to say about this album. I feel like they tried to ruin an album I otherwise would adore. The main part of it contains some great great songs. Much of it is also played great. But in between we have some of the most annoying unnecessary electronic music bits that ruin the run of the tracklist significantly. I understand the desire to complicate and experiment. But not at all costs, if you're not good at it. Instead of a 35 minute lovely indie rock album, we are left with 52 minutes mess. Still a 3 Maybe high high 2

some REAL huge low points on this thing

This grew and grew and grew on me over the course of the album. It's a well-played, appealing mix of ELO, folk, and indie rock. I'll be coming back to it.

Didn’t like this one at all

Not my taste

i didnt love this but it was super engaging thanks to the variety

Weird band name, some good songs

“Nominated for the Mercury Prize” is Wikipedia code for “this record blows chunks!”

Maybe it is not my day. I can not really relate. I found the first of their records quite amusing. The amusements now gone. I admit there must be humour here, which saves it some two points, cause I am in a good mood.

This album couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. Some good moments, some bad

Pleasantly surprised. Reminded me of Hawkwind. Always felt like the next song was going to be Silver Machine.

It was at this moment I realised I’d conflated Super Furry Animals & Fun Lovin’ Criminals. This was dull.

nice surprise

Thought this was better than the debut album, but still suffers from corny vocals. Thought the experimentation on the album was interesting, and definitely flowed really well. Not sure if I’d revisit, but still a good listen. Rating: 6/10 (Decent) Favorite Song: Sidewalk Serfer Girl

This album is all over the place. Some of it sounds Bowie adjacent, some Blur adjacent, and some more electronica? I like it, though not necessarily all of it.

A bit quirky melody-wise but in a way I quite liked. Another band from the 90’s & early 00’s that I knew of but had no clue what they sounded like. Another pleasant surprise. Rounded up.

I sighed when this came up. I listened to SFA's debut album for this challenge two days ago. I had no prior knowledge of them and did not really enjoy what Fuzzy Logic gave me. That album wasn't really in danger of getting a 1, but having had to listen to them recently and this album coming up less than a week after that, I expected my goodwill for SFA to have run dry and sheer attrition to make me harsher to this later SFA album. I expected this to be a 1. I was pleasantly surprised to find Rings was a superior album to Fuzzy by pretty much all of my metrics. You can tell this album is by the same band, but it feels like they've transitioned with the times, moving out of an early Britpop phase into something more resembling the rock they're often labelled as, even if only when you squint. Fuzzy had no memorable songs looking back or ones I really enjoyed in the moment; Rings has the title-track which is a solid song and the attempts at other styles meant the track felt a lot more varied, with the electronic-inspired latter half of No Sympathy being a high-light. A much more well-rounded and unique album, and I am happy that this band has something a bit more for me, rather than putting them down as a band I don't like.

Super quite indie is how it started out. Nothing about this is memorable to me. I listened, I wasn't distracted. I instantly forgot it. Most of the album has me thinking about psychedelic furs and put one of their songs stuck in my head

Awful album art, the resolution looks squashed. Very enjoyable album, though. I was surprised by how chill it was, and the production was similarly high quality.

Meh

Ok…

First Listen; 3; This was a perfectly pleasant and enjoyable rock and rock-adjacent album. I was pleasantly surprised with how many genres this album mixed in, and does it in a way that feels coherent. Also hear a lot of 90s/00s influences and similar artists: Oasis, Flaming Lips, Gorillaz, Foo Fighters Even? The production is very tight and clean. Favorite Track: Sidewalk Serfer Girl

Mid

This one sounds like it might be pretty good. GPT describes it as:psychedelic pop/art rock with electronic bits, glam, folk, orchestral arrangements, weird humor, and occasional bursts of heavier guitar. Wow I really liked this album!! 4 stars.

Once again, SFA are *much* better when the lyrics are in Cymraeg. I don’t know why, but it just works so much better I don’t object to English lyrics, and there are some touches on this that remind me of the funkier elements of Belle and Sebastian. Which is a good thing. There’s also some Beatles-adjacent notes, which I appreciate less. And overall it’s OK without setting the world on fire

Another band that I didn’t get into at the time (and now I think I see why). I liked this in bursts, but unfortunately the vocals made me think of maybe ELO or something, which for me = ick. I did appreciate some of the impenetrable lyrics, and all the nice garbled fuzz in some of the songs. And while he wasn’t singing I kept imagining it could be a 4; I liked “(A) Touch Sensitive” a lot, for example, but guess what, it was an instrumental. I guess if I could do decimals I’d give it a 3.5. I managed to resist turning it off before it ended, at least.

This was a nice album to have playing in the background. I got a little tripped up because the lead singer's voice reminded me of the lead singer from Blur's voice at times. Nothing particularly stood out to me with this album, however.

This was an odd one. First time listening to this Welsh band and I really liked the 60s tinged tracks but but then the techno parts felt even more jarring because of them. Wiki describes this album as being eclectic. That an understatement 4 STARS for those lovely proggy songs + 2 for the techno averages at 3.

This was more diverse and surprising than their other album on here (which I actually surprisingly liked better).

Really don't know what to make of this, think it's too weird for the sake of being weird 2/5

A little wacky Damon Albarn type shit! I had a blast and was reminded of other guys i love like Ok Go and Supertramp

9/10

Cool in a weird way, weird in a cool way. Couldn’t stomach the whole thing, and won’t revisit, but an interesting pick

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

3/5 I bump this from a 2 to a 3 because I appreciate the range and experimentation of this album. Some of the tracks were interesting.

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.