You can feel the heat transfer from a fire and from the Sun. Similarly, you can sometimes tell that the oven is hot without touching its door or looking inside—it may just warm you as you walk by. The space between the Earth and the Sun is largely empty, without any possibility of heat transfer by convection or conduction. In these examples, heat is transferred by radiation. That is, the hot body emits electromagnetic waves that are absorbed by our skin: no medium is required for electromagnetic waves to propagate.1
I like to think of this moment in 1997 as the Super Furry Animals “sliding doors” moment, for some fans at least. After their remarkable debut album Fuzzy Logic, the Furries pushed on with their second album, Radiator. For some fans of the first record, it didn’t sound right. Their sound had changed “too much”. For other, it was the moment they went from a great psyche-rock band to one of the greatest bands of all time. I sit firmly in the second camp and think Radiator is the best and most complete album.
Read my article about Fuzzy Logic here
Actually the album is just a maturation of the sound they created with Fuzzy Logic, but it’s also filled with mature musical touches and a powerful warmth. The packaging is a delight, as SFA joined forces with designer Pete Fowler for the first time, and the freaky cartoons pop with energy
Their first double album, it is a pleasure to dig through the tracks once more.
Side one
The album opens with a discordant keyboard before moving into a beautiful, precise musical box of delights with short instrumental Furryvision. Picked strings dance in the background as the song fades out.
The Placid Casual is a raucous anthemic cheer of a song, and Gryff’s voice is as good as ever. He seems to be singing about a cat/dog running amok in his house befre he turns the song into another of his history lessons. LIsten to the short snatch of fuzz bass in the pause, and the dancing bass of the final bars. Bass player Guto Pryce is clearly enjoying himself.
The folk punk anger of The International Language of Screaming is wonderful. SFA had this natural talent for writing singalong tracks without them sounding uncouth or boorish. This track is a joy, driven by thundering drums from Dafydd Ieuan. “On the contrary, if I scream it I mean it…” goes the track.
Demons, a top 30 hit single, is one of my favourite tracks on the album. It's built around lovely acoustic chords before the chorus introduces descending fuzz lines and remarkable, harmonising backing vocals. The chorus is catchy and so simple to pick up, and the lyrics are typically opaque and playful.
And by the year four million
Our skins will be vermilion
I own a dartboard memory
So I'll forget any felony
The horns are marvellous, a throwback to late 60s sunshine pop. This is not a “flirt with mediocrity” as Gryff sings.
Side two
Side two opens with another instrumental, the playful Short Painkiller, which has psychedelic sounds phasing in and out, a radio interference of a track, before it moves into the opening 70s lounge groove of She’s Got Spies. This is a song that disguises itself. A minute or so of this cool, synth and guitar led easy listening gives way to the crunching guitar and shouting of the rest of the track. SFA were the masters of this kind of joyful indie punk, because they were musically talented enough to give the song real flavour. Few bands can play with words with such abandon: “She’s got hooks meant for catching fish at sea…And she’s casting them out and about to catch me unaware.”
Side two is just magic after magic. We soon move on to the indie funk pop of Play It Cool, a song with swagger and groove and a wonderful falsetto during the chorus.
'Cause it's no problem if you play it cool
Things are different if you act a fool
All the SFA singles from Radiator hit the top 30 in the UK, and they were the best examples of indie pop at the time. Anyone still listening to Oasis over this needed their head examining.
I have a clear memory of the first single from the album. Hermann Loves Pauline appeared on The Chart Show one saturday morning.
I was blown away by the energy, by the madness and by the fact this band I loved had returned. A strange sound gives way to crashing cymbals and chords and we hear the tale of Pauline and Hermann.
Hermann Loves Pauline, and Pauline loves Hermann
They made love and gave birth, to a little German
They called him MC squared, cos he raps like no other
An asthma sufferer, like Ernesto Guevara
It’s wonderfully funny and silly but it channels a late 60s psychedelic vibe during the verse and bridge before a punky chorus, one of the best they ever created. This song is the centrepiece of the album and finishes off side two with breathless energy.
This is a free article. Six weeks after publication it will disappear behind a paywall so if you would like to access to my archives and future paywalled post please consider joining my list of paid subscribers.
Side three
Side three gives us more stomping chanting thunder in Chupacabras2, insane chorus yelling “Soy super bien soy super super bien soy bien bien super bien bien bien super super!”. It’s a million miles from the sublime energy of the next track, the sunshine pop song Torra Fy Ngwallt yn Hir3, a perfect, soaring piece of rock.
The band rock out on Bass Tuned To D.E.A.D., more fuzz rock lines from Huw Bunford before the slinky verses and the soaring chorus, another typically infectious melody ringing out. It’s probably the track that reminds me most of the first album, that blends of woody folky guitars and electric soloing, but the touch of whistling synths elevates it higher. Especially as we get to the chanted section and the blistering rock chords after a couple of minutes.
The side ends with another piece of singaloing pop, Down a Different River, but one that starts with probing, squeaking tunings and more pastoral folk sounds. Gryff sings in his lower voice, quitely, until the drums rumble and the band sing the chorus, guitars wailing behind. It’s a great end to the side, and sets us up for the final one.
Side four
Download is a piano led ballad, notes picked out and descending and echoing, like a long lost John Cale4 track. Gryff sings with someone else, probably Bunf, on an explicitly political track
There are people who think, and people who don't
And the people who don't are the ones who have most
There are people who lie, and others who cry
And the people who lie are the ones that get by
Lots of synth sounds circle round this simple, beautiful track, a sound that bring the feel of the later SFA work of things like Hey Venus. The lyrics may be simplistic, but to the 26 year old me, it chimed perfectly with my political ideas at the time. And the musical touch of the drums bursting in just as the song faes was delightful.
The album finishes with another example of their infectious pop. Mountain People swings and sways: a song where drunk friends swager arms in arm yelling
They'll seek us in the valley
They'll seek us on the plain
I have so much love for this band. This track rounds the album off with perfection: a spaghetti western of an instrumental break until the staccato groove resumes. The song builds and builds until it seems to bend in on itself. “A deep freeze put me in it and I'll sneeze” repeated over and over, a crunching, repetitive chord and more blooping and glooping synth sounds, like the record is stuck and warping.
Creation records put most of their energy into promoting the bloated Oasis album Be Here Now released just four days early, and perhaps they were right to do that. Be Here Now became the biggest selling album in the UK that year, and the fastest selling album in UK history, but it’s a mess compared to the shimmering and eclectic pop of the Super Furry Animals’ sophomore release.
Sponsored and paid link to buy from Amazon: Radiator vinyl
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-physics/chapter/14-7-radiation/
The chupacabra or chupacabras is a mythical creature reputed to come from Puerto Rico and even down as far as Chile. The chupacabra is said to attack and drink the blood of livestock, including goats.
Cut my hair long
Coincidentally, also Welsh!