Super Furry Animals
Brixton Academy, London
22nd May 2026
Back on stage for the first time in ten years, Super Furry Animals have not just rediscovered their magic, but given it a fresh lick of paint. Tom Parry sees the Welsh wizards back at their experimental best.
The live resurrection of Super Furry Animals brought with it a whisper of heady expectation which hummed down the long, snaking queue around Brixton Academy. We had all been waiting a decade for the return of this band, probably the most restlessly creative to emerge in the mid-1990s, so another half-hour stuck in a line seemed somehow appropriate.
The venue’s somewhat over-zealous security system did mean, however, that I was among hundreds of Super Furry devotees to be in a position only a few minutes before the band came on stage, promptly, at 9pm. Others behind me were presumably less fortunate.
In keeping with their singular reputation as purveyors of intriguing and uncategorisably brilliant material, the opening song was not one of their most celebrated from the extensive and incredibly varied back catalogue. A fan favourite though.
Gruff Rhys, a singer-songwriter who cannot be easily stereotyped as a ‘frontman’, ambled on with an oversized phone, a prop for the song – Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home).
This was a gentle statement of intent, a reminder that, as well as being musical alchemists, SFA also does both props and irony. They were never an ordinary band, and for this reunion tour, the intent was clear – they would carry on where they left off.
Though the set was mostly composed of material that is now between 20 and 30 years old, Gruff and the other members of the band – Huw Bunford, Guto Pryce, Cian Ciarán and Daf Ieuan – seemed reinvigorated. They successfully avoided the trap of seeming like a pastiche of their old selves, one of the sad side-effects of bands that get back together just to pay off their collective mortgages.
After the steady opener, they positively blitzed through their adventurous, always-evolving career. The second tune, (Drawing) Rings Around The World swirled with trippy foreboding, but like all of their best work was a poppy singalong too.
From then on, they barely relented, making the sensible choice not to bore the audience with tedious speeches between songs about why they had reunited. We were all there to be reconnected with tunes that were completely out of kilter with the norm when they came out, and have become firmly hardwired into our brains in the years since.
SFA never went for the obvious, and with this set spanning most of the best stuff from their repertoire, they kept up a pace which did not disappoint. In short, they haven’t lost their touch.
At times, Gruff’s voice – angelic and ethereal at its best – wavered, marginally off-key, but it really didn’t matter. This sold-out tour has been a brisk reminder of just how talented a band SFA was, and evidently still is. In the interim, Gruff, most of all, has been a hard-working polymath, impressing with the range of his solo and other occasional band projects.
He remains a real visionary from an era which has often celebrated the acts ready to just regurgitate rather than re-engage. In the same way that Damon Albarn and Thom Yorke have come back to their original bands in recent years while continuing with their never-ending quest for new musical expression, Gruff seemed to relish the warmth of being back in the comforting surroundings of SFA without compromise.
True to form, the last few songs saw SFA at their most wild and eccentric, with the furry costumes out for a glorious, rowdy version of much-loved set closer The Man Don’t Give A Fuck.
On the basis of this show, there’s plenty of appetite for SFA to stride confidently into their fourth decade.
~
Words by Tom Parry, you can find his author’s archivehere, plus on Twitterand hiswebsite
Photo by Stuart Teehan (supplied)
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