Super Furry Animals - Love kraft (2005) [SACD]

As Super Furry Animals settle into their second decade of recording and with it their status as veteran rockers, they're inevitably less surprising than they were at the outset of their career, when their music not only had an exhilarating rush, but there was a sense of impish glee, the sense that they were getting away with something that they shouldn't. That naturally has declined with the passage of time, yet with their seventh album, 2005's Love Kraft, SFA show signs of settling comfortably into their status as alt-rock veterans. Compared to the top-heavy, ponderous Rings Around the World and the trippy pop of Phantom Power, Love Kraft sounds warm and relaxed, lush and dreamy, with a strong, distinct sweet undercurrent to the music.

Not, seemingly, an album about the Welsh band's adoration of boxed macaroni and cheese products. Then again, with Super Furry Animals it's impossible to tell. Its seventh album is aimed squarely at those who find the Flaming Lips a little too timid, Brian Wilson too rational, the Arcade Fire too conventional - essentially people who will always pick Donovan over Dylan. "Zoom" opens things with wailing guitars and a celestial chorus, tumbling into the LSD-dipped psychedelia of "Atomik Lust," which includes the only decipherable lyric, "Fine time to walk on wine," and then it's off to Neptune with the twisted but tender "Ohio Heat." A fine addition to a career that has already yielded bizzare hits like "Golden Retriever" and "Something 4 The Weekend." --Aidin Vaziri