It’s my job to market @superfurry’s music, and the way to do that is to contextualise it.

So here’s a thread on the context and circumstances that lead to Mwng being created.

#timstwitterlisteningparty #partigwrandotrydartim
#mwng

Some of this is speculation on my part, but I think it’s a pretty solid deconstruction of the album and what’s important to know about it, based on having worked with the band and spent every day of the past year researching their catalogue.

Mwng is such an important album in SFA’s history. Each album before Rings Around The World is them finding their voice in one way or another, and Mwng is the final piece of the puzzle.

Rings - their major label debut - consolidates what they’d done on their first 4 albums.

Their previous album, Guerrilla, while successful, was perhaps not as successful as the band or the label were hoping.

There were a few reasons. They had to cobble together a video from library footage of the album's big single after losing the director.

He got a job directing a Red Stripe commercial and left the project to spend two weeks on a beach in Jamaica.

There were concept drawings for the video made by @PeteFowlerArt and everything! https://twitter.com/superfurry/status/1178599816059916288

But looking back, it was an experimental techno album with a few brilliant pop choruses surfacing for air every now and then. It was never going to be a massive mainstream success despite its high quality.

The band famously said that they went on “pop strike” after that album. Hence the stark, rawness of Mwng.

Thematically, Mwng is probably the most interesting of SFA’s albums.

1990s pop culture could be summed up by a sense of ironic detachment from things.

Gruff’s lyrics and the band’s interviews up to then pretty much fit in with that.

Here’s what I mean:

I can only speculate, maybe @gruffingtonpost can elaborate…

Singing in his second language, Gruff’s lyrics were abstract because they were merely a vehicle for melody.

Growing up, the words in English pop songs were meaningless, but the melodies stuck.

While the lyrics are still somewhat abstract (with brilliant turns of phrase and plays-on-words), the switch to Welsh on Mwng signifies a slightly more sincere approach.

Instead of meaningless words as vehicles for melodies, Gruff starts trying to get more ideas across.

And that’s why Mwng is so great - it’s the final piece of the Super Furry puzzle.

Fuzzy Logic and Radiator were guitar-driven pop, Guerrilla was techno and experimentation (sonically and compositionally), but Mwng was about communicating to an audience.

The year 2000 was a turning point. Culturally the new millennium was a big deal, there was a general feeling of fin de siècle.

Creation Records had gone bust. The last album wasn’t a chart-topper. There was personal turmoil the previous year for the band.

Mwng is almost like a purging process for the band.

Going back to Wales to record the album, and to release it themselves on their own label, was a crucial stepping stone for the band so that they could go on and make Rings Around The World.

And as somebody who works for a record label, can I just say how impressive it is that 5 musicians just put an album out themselves and got a number 11 album.

The logistics involved in selling that many albums - in the year 2000 - is insane!