Love Kraft (20th Anniversary Edition)

Super Furry Animals was one of my favorite bands in the early 00s. I remember coming across their album Rings Around the World (2001) at New Moon Records in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan completely randomly and taking a chance on it. It was probably one of the last CDs I ever purchased and I can still recite many of the lyrics to that double album.

While they had been out for a while at that point, my mind was blown as a 20-year-old from small town Michigan. I had no baseline for Welsch surrealism the likes of No Sympathy, where Crosby Stills & Nash-style harmonies quickly bake into comic country before finally melting your face off with 200 bpm electronica. More, please!

Love Kraft is a great album as well. Still genre bending, it felt a bit more contained. While I had moved on from carrying an enormous book of CDs to pocketing an iPod by then (2004), a few of this albums songs were on heavy rotation. One of my favorites was Cloudberries, which often suited me as a moody bitch. Likewise, Cabin Fever and Oi Frango also spoke to me. Walk You Home sounds like Wilco's Sky Blue Sky – six years before it came out.

Seeing the 20th Anniversary Edition pop up in my feed sent me back to those strange and socially awkward college years.