We meet the morning after their first gig for 10 years, when the band\u2019s famous yeti suits were broken out of storage, the outlandish props were on full display and their rallying cry \u201cSFA okay\u201d was proclaimed with full-throated vigour. It was, by all accounts, a riotous celebration<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were just amazed how smoothly it went,\u201d Rhys says, nursing a cup of coffee. \u201cWe messed up a few things, but we had a lot of fun and we were able to enjoy it. And to play for the first time in 10 years \u2026 \u201d He trails off for a moment, lost in thought. \u201cA lot went into that first gig, so we were all really buzzing after it. I mean, we can\u2019t take it for granted that anyone would show up.\u201d <\/p>\n There was a postgig celebration. \u201cBut, luckily, the hotel bar was closed,\u201d he quips. \u201cWe celebrated a bit in the Olympia, and some of the braver members managed to find a pub, I think. But it wasn\u2019t too mad.\u201d<\/p>\n Dublin was an apt choice of location to kick off their tour, given how much of an influence Irish music and tastemakers had on Super Furry Animals as youngsters. Although the band formed in Cardiff in 1993, Irish radio frequencies would drift across the Irish Sea to Gwynned, where Rhys and his bandmates Dafydd Ieuan and Cian Ciar\u00e1n, who are brothers, grew up. (Huw Bunford, who plays guitar, and Guto Pryce, the bassist, are both from Cardiff.)<\/p>\n \u201cWe got to hear Dave Fanning and Marty Whelan and people like that, because BBC Radio 1 was blocked by the mountains, so we\u2019d pick up the signal from the west,\u201d Rhys says. \u201cWe\u2019d get RT\u00c9 Radio 2 and lots of pop radio. <\/p>\n \u201cI mean, in the 1980s, Christy Moore and bands like Clannad were huge. They had huge records in Ireland and they were, by default, big records in Wales. You picked up the signal, and it became what you heard. You\u2019re not necessarily going out and buying the records, but you know it all.\u201d<\/p>\n Rhys is as quietly eccentric in conversation as he is on record, peppering his conversation with long pauses, regularly closing his eyes and cocking his head as he mulls over questions. As with his music, it\u2019s a matter of tuning into his frequency and finding his cadence. <\/p>\n He has been consistently busy over the years, he agrees, spinning a multitude of plates with different projects and collaborations, but what drew him back to Super Furry Animals after such a lengthy hiatus?<\/p>\n \u201cWe get asked regularly enough to play, so it was just a matter of finding a time everyone was into it,\u201d he says, shrugging. \u201cWe\u2019ve worked with the same booking agent for 30 years, Geoff Meall, and he bats things away for us if it\u2019s not right \u2013 because if we do something it can snowball into years sometimes. <\/p>\n \u201cLast time we were going to do a three-week tour and we were on the road for two years, so we know it\u2019s a commitment, in a way.\u201d He takes another long pause. \u201cAnd you know, we\u2019ve reached an age where we\u2019re losing friends. So we really appreciate what we\u2019ve done together, and it\u2019s a chance to hang out and play. This seemed to be the year to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n The four Super Furry Animals bandmates had formed a new group, Das Koolies, in 2019; they released their debut album in 2023. Rhys says it wasn\u2019t hard to settle back in with them.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s strange how time seems more malleable as you age,\u201d he says, chuckling. \u201cI think because we\u2019ve spent so much time together there\u2019s a dynamic to how we work, so it feels like yesterday. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had quite extreme life experiences together \u2013 extreme highs and extreme lows \u2013 so we know each other very well. That bit is very easy and very unspoken in a way, and I suppose it\u2019s the same with music, in that we\u2019re not so much talkers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe tend to communicate through music, and we don\u2019t give each other much instruction within the band. We all have a role, and we sort of trust each other to do what everyone does.\u201d<\/p>\n The reunion has also given him cause to look at Super Furry Animals\u2019 enduring legacy. Back in the 1990s they were pegged as the oddballs amid the wave of Britpop and American bands clogging the charts; here were a group who sometimes sang in Welsh; bought an army tank they customised as a mobile sound system and drove around Glastonbury festival; and released a song that set a record for the number of times it used the work \u201cf**k\u201d. (They still close every set with The Man Don\u2019t Give a F**k.) <\/p>\n Did the \u201cweirdos\u201d tag ever bother them?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not something I define myself by, so we don\u2019t even think about it,\u201d Rhys says, shrugging. \u201cI think we\u2019re pretty conventional. We were just amazed how unimaginative a lot of music was when we were starting off, I suppose. <\/p>\n \u201cEverything was quite formulaic, especially pre-internet. I don\u2019t know if there were more gatekeepers, but the gates were bigger, maybe, whereas now it\u2019s a sort of kaleidoscopic world of music, which is incredible. It\u2019s easier for people to accept all kinds of things.\u201d He shrugs again. \u201cAnglo-American rock\u2018n\u2019roll was the paradigm, and anything that didn\u2019t seem to fit into that in some way was deemed weird.\u201d<\/p>\n The set list on their current tour essentially makes it a greatest-hits revue that spans the magnificent breadth of their three decades together, and has given Rhys cause to reflect on which of their albums were most significant. <\/p>\n Their second, Radiator, released in 1996, was the one that defined them, he says. \u201cIt kind of skewed us away, somehow, from everyone else. It\u2019s like the record where we found our audience. But they\u2019re all significant for us.\u201d <\/p>\n Mwng, their first album entirely in Welsh, from 2000, was meaningful in terms of both the language and the music. \u201cIt\u2019s the sound of the band after touring three albums, so we could really play live together. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd Rings Around the World [from 2001] was amazing, because we had a number one in Hong Kong, and it was a big record in southeast Asia, which was unimaginable a few years earlier. With Phantom Power we were at our peak, touring the world and going places we\u2019d never been.\u201d <\/p>\n He smiles at the memory. \u201cSo they\u2019re the big ones for me.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s extremely healthy to have a language treated with irreverence and with a sense of joy and fun<\/p>\n \u2014 \u00a0Rhys on Kneecap<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Welsh has played an important role in Rhys\u2019s life and musical career. Alongside Mwng, he has released three Welsh-language solo albums over the years; the most recent was Dim Probs, from last year. <\/p>\n He raised with Welsh as his first language \u2013 his father, Ioan Bowen Rees, was a poet and campaigner for the culture and language \u2013 and he comes alive when speaking about his native tongue. <\/p>\n There has been a decline in Welsh-speaking communities in recent years, but there is still a \u201cstrong scene\u201d of bands who continue to use the language. Government legislation to make the language more visible has delighted him. <\/p>\n \u201cI have emotional experiences in supermarkets, experiencing the language on an AI till,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cBut it\u2019s very meaningful for me, and it\u2019s all come from a lot of activism for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n He therefore \u201ctotally understands\u201d the cultural significance of a band such as Kneecap<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd they go down the storm in Wales,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve seen them a couple of times, and they have an understanding of Wales and the language community there. <\/p>\n \u201cI love their irreverence, as well. I suppose our languages are so fragile in the geopolitics of the world today; they\u2019re extremely fragile vessels we have to carry carefully, and sometimes the responsibility becomes too much. <\/p>\n \u201cSo sometimes it\u2019s extremely healthy to have a language treated with irreverence and with a sense of joy and fun. When you speak a minority language there\u2019s a pressure, to a certain extent, to sing about various types of mist or something.\u201d He grins. \u201cBut it\u2019s also healthy to sing about making a drug deal in your mother tongue.\u201d<\/p>\n Super Furry Animals haven\u2019t discussed writing or recording new material, he says, so we may never find out what their incursions into Kneecap-style hip-hop would sound like. For now, their reunion is simply about enjoying reconnecting with his old friends, getting on a stage together and playing songs that remain vibrant and beloved.<\/p>\n \u201cWe came into it as a touring idea, and it\u2019s nice dealing with music where all the decisions have been made. That takes off a huge layer of stress.\u201d He laughs. \u201cWe\u2019ve had to make so many decisions together: on the colour of the label, on the B side of the second disc of the triple album. We\u2019re a detail-oriented band. <\/p>\n \u201cBut it\u2019s the same with the tour: the set lists are fully democratic, to an elaborate degree of computing. And we\u2019ve been having a good time. The music is incredibly fragile, and it\u2019s a fragile existence; it\u2019s not something we can take for granted, so we\u2019re really enjoying it and appreciating the records and the music.\u201d <\/p>\n He shrugs as the band\u2019s tour manager beckons him away and they prepare to depart for the next stop on their roving revue. <\/p>\n \u201cJust trying to figure out how to play the songs is a beautiful thing to do together.\u201d<\/p>\n Super Furry Animals play<\/a> the National Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks, with special guests Baxter Dury and Really Good Time, on Sunday, August 30th, as part of the Wider Than Pictures<\/a> concert series<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was the concept album about the 18th-century Welsh explorer John Evans. There was the record influenced by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[40651,43218,221131,18,117,242765,19,17,4066,122597,242764,17331],"class_list":["post-569404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-christy-moore","tag-clannad","tag-dave-fanning","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-gruff-rhys","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kneecap","tag-marty-whelan","tag-super-furry-animals","tag-wales"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116864952718238176","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Gruff](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/J4ZT2SUL55GSRIMUTXNRXGOHUY.jpg\")
Gruff Rhys, Guto Pryce and Huw Bunford of Super Furry Animals at the Olympia Theatre in 2016. Photograph: Kieran Frost\/Redferns <\/p>\n![\"Super](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/NCS7AAHDSNG5FLGTMOPDTT7IF4.jpg\")
Super Furry Animals in concert. Photograph: A Jeffreys\/Mirrorpix via Getty <\/p>\n\n
![\"Gruff](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/43KLNWWFAETF7N4DPZOWQL27PI.jpg\")
Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals, who played Electric Arena on Friday night at Electric Picnic. Photograph: Dave Meehan <\/p>\n