Venus & Serena-Super Furry Animals

Super Furry Animals have been making sweetly melodic, offkilter pop music for over a decade, with each successive album they release representing a different, wholly unique planetoid within their bizarre, fun-filled little solar system. The Furries’ 2003 long-player, Phantom Power, is among their most cohesive. While it doesn’t have peaks that reach as high as, say, Radiator’s ‘She’s Got Spies’ or Fuzzy Logic’s ‘Something 4 The Weekend’, it also doesn’t possess the valleys of those two albums either. However, if ever there was a high point on Phantom Power, it is definitely ‘Venus & Serena’.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Clearly this is about two tennis-playing sisters. How could it not be?” To which I say, “You know, I have to agree with you.” However, it turns out that apparently singer Gruff Rhys (he’s Welsh) had two pet turtles as a lad named, coincidentally enough, Venus & Serena. What’s strange about this is that lyrically, the song isn’t even about the turtles; it describes a conversation between a confused boy seeking advice from his adoptive father (who, it turns out, took the boy in after finding him on his doorstep, left there by a pack of wolves who had cared for the infant).

Ultimately, I get the sense that one of two things is going on in this song; either Gruff greatly admires the Williams sisters, or he chose to use their names because he liked the sound of them—most likely the latter. There’s always been an element of contrived absurdity in the Furries’ songs; in fact, it’s one of their defining qualities. But what makes this song so enjoyable has nothing to do with the lyrics or narrative conceit whatsoever. It’s the laid-back, sun-soaked harmonies and the so-simple-and-obvious-it’s-ridiculous melodic composition. Despite its creation by a fringe Britpop band from Wales, ‘Venus & Serena’ is coastal California through and through, and when you listen to it, you realize that the absurd lyrics are there primarily to give Rhys’s voice something to do as it guides the listener from start to finish. Not that one listen is ever enough.

With Tomorrow-Gene Clark

I’ve been on a really big Gene Clark kick lately. For those of you who don’t know who the hell I’m talking about, Gene Clark was the driving songwriting force behind the first two Byrds albums. The shame of it is that most people today only really remember the Byrds for their inspired readings of Bob Dylan’s songs–which, don’t get me wrong, are pretty fucking awesome. But the fact of the matter is that “America’s answer to The Beatles” wrote a ton of original material, too. And it was Gene Clark that composed the lion’s share of it. Unfortunately, several factors contributed to his exiting the band prematurely: his fear of flying precluded him from going on promotional tours, the other band members were beginning to chafe at Clark’s augmented income (thanks to publishing royalties), and his inability to play guitar and sing simultaneously led him to be viewed on tour and on TV as little more than a back-up singer.

What bothers me about this is that Clark was, without doubt, the most accomplished singer in the group. David Crosby has always been a better harmonizer than melodicist, and I always found Roger McGuinn’s reedy voice grating, my dislike of it constantly competing with my love of his ringing, jangly guitar tones. But, with four vocalists (including bassist Chris Hillman) singing in layered, interweaving unison, it’s easy to understand why Clark’s was not as appreciated as it should have been.

After his exodus from The Byrds, Clark became a solo artist, releasing two critically-acclaimed but commercially DOA albums of pioneering country-rock. After a brief reunion with The Byrds in ‘67, he dropped out of the dimming spotlight and regrouped. When he returned in 1971, he did it in a grandly understated fashion; White Light is a beautifully ruminative album, featuring spare instrumentation on most of the tracks. While it does possess a couple stabs at more rollicking, upbeat tempos, it’s the slower acoustic songs that steal the show, first of which is track two, ‘With Tomorrow’. At under two and a half minutes, there’s just enough time for Clark to sing through two verses and two choruses detailing his sadness over a lover’s departure and his intention to relive the joy of their relationship everyday thereafter, even if it also entails reliving the pain of the relationship’s deterioration. In a lot of ways, the song bears a striking thematic resemblance to Colin (former lead singer of British Invasion band The Zombies) Blunstone’s ‘Caroline Goodbye’, also about the departure of a lover for (presumably) greener pastures. The primary difference between the two songs is a cultural one; not only is Blunstone’s voice unmistakably English, but he’s much more detailed in his description of both the relationship in general, and the object of his affection in particular. However, there’s an undercurrent of detached unsentimentality coloring his narrative; Blunstone’s not surprised in the least by the outcome, and can muster little more than a sheepish smirk and shrug of the shoulders. Clark, on the other hand, is quietly devastated, expressing more heartache in two and half minutes of lyrical ambivalence than Blunstone can muster in three and half minutes of lyrical minutiae. It’s this impassioned stoicism that is so very “American” and separates ‘With Tomorrow’ from the self-effacing vignette of ‘Caroline Goodbye’. It’s this very same contrast in thematic conceit that we’ll see played out again and again, from British Invasion and folk-rock all the way forward to grunge and Britpop.