Super Furry Animals - Rings Around The World

March is a bitch. For every day of heart-stoppingly nice weather, there’s a bitterly cold week that follows up to remind you that hibernation ain’t over yet, kid. However, Super Furry Animals’ Rings Around the World is an ideal choice for spring fever salvation. Close your eyes, turn up the thermostat, and be engulfed by disc filled to the brim with the brightest album this side of a beach on Mercury – not bad for a gang of Welshmen. The lunar allusion fits Rings well, not just for its Saturnian title – for nearly an hour, SFA sets off in its own singular orbit, touching on techno garage rock ("Sidewalk Surfer Girl"), twerked out breakbeats ("[A] Touch Sensitive"), and vocoder bossanova (the brilliant "Juxtapozed With U") The everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach can get a little too experimental for its own good sometimes, but, more often than not, the Furries have the songwriting chops to back it up. Nowhere is this more apparent than the soaring "Shoot Doris Day," typifying SFA’s ability to blend the soaringly classic, string-arranged Britpop with lyrics that catapult from Jimmy Stewart to "binging on crack and tiramisu" – without degenerating into a sound-collage jumble. Featuring cameos by Paul McCartney (on "celery and carrot," apparently ) and the Velvet Underground’s John Cale, along with string arrangements by Sean O’Hagan of the venerable High Llamas, the disc is a high water mark for sophisticated postmodern pop, expanding upon the Beach Boys standard with atmospheric electronics and moody, near-ambient interludes – yet all the while maintaining a singularly quirky vibe. The album’s not for everyone, but if you dig Supergrass, the more guitar-based work of Beck, or The Beatles’ White Album, you won’t go wrong with a Super Furry Animal in your life. [www.ringsaroundtheworld.co.uk]