By JAYA GUPTA Special to the Daily Press
Leave it up to the Super Furry Animals to make hitting the same piano key over and over again sound like genius. And leave it up to them to get their fans diving for stalks of celery. Absurd as it may sound, SFA’s concert at the Avalon on Nov. 29 was not only exhilarating but nutritious.
In front of a sparse crowd, Toronto-based artist Caribou started off the late show with music that in essence can only be described as experimentally-driven. Caribou mastermind Dan Snaith juxtaposes all-out noise with intricate melody using everything from guitars routed through innumerable effect pedals to xylophones.
By the time SFA hit the stage, the auditorium had swelled with people representing a cross-section of age groups. Five men dressed in plastic jumpsuits decorated with spattered glow-in-the-dark paint entered the stage after a video introduction that showed them making their way through LA on a single golf cart.
They blasted out “The International Language of Screaming” to start off the set. Though currently supporting their latest “Love Kraft,” a markedly mature work, SFA toned down none of their mischievous stage histrionics. After playing “Cloudberries” and “Atomik Lust,” a fantastic song off LK when a single piano key is hit monotonously, lead singer Gruff Rhys grabbed some zucchini and celery and began devouring it. Forgetting not others’ nutrition, he also handed celery out to the audience. SFA went on to play most of the songs off their compilation record, “Songbook: Vol. 1,” including “Slow Life” and “Juxtaposed with U” — for which Rhys would don an oversized Power Ranger helmet.
The night, however, was not officially over until the video showing the band exiting the theatre on the same golf cart and loading themselves into a U-haul truck had ended.
SFA’s set could have well been a scene out of an Absurdist comedy; the Super Furry Animals at the Avalon was one hell of a show and one that won’t be forgotten.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 9, 2005. Read the original PDF.