I realised that my main post on this album was rather taken up with trying to prove that Gruff Rhys was a genius and very little about 'Guerrilla' itself and my experience of it. Rather a shame, as it's so tied up with a particular time for me, and I so thoroughly experienced it as a single entity, that it's a good opportunity to talk about that phenomenon, which has been increasingly hard to find with the digitization of music.
So, let me set the scene. The album was released in the summer of 1999, preceded by the single 'Northern Lites'. I hadn't, in fact, been totally and utterly sold on the Furries before that point, but I loved 'Northern Lites'. If any Furries track was to be a massive hit, it was this one, but it stalled at Number 11. The next single, 'Fire in my Heart' came out in August 1999 and was really just as good, a beautiful harmony-laden circular torch song, one of the sweetest, straightest songs the Furries ever did, which again stalled in the charts far short of its deserved position.
I was finally ready to embrace the Furries wholeheartedly as I returned to St Andrews University for my third year, taking up residence in a shared house, 7 Baker Lane.
Aah, Baker Lane. The name sends shivers through all who knew it. I lived there with friends Alex and John. Finding a flat/house in St Andrews was a bit of a circus, always conducted the previous February, as there were only so many good ones to go round. John, Alex and I had agreed to rent with another fellow named Richard Smith, and even reached an agreement on a lovely 4-bedroom house on North Street, only for Smith to mysteriously duck out at the very last minute. Ah Smith.
So, we three kings of mirth were stuck needing to find a three-bed place when pretty much everything had already been taken, and all we could find was 7 Baker Lane. It was central - check! A house - super! Picturesque - mmm! It had a piano - luverly, and a garden - sweeet! It had two bedrooms, both the size of cupboards -hmmm. One of them had bunk beds - ah. It had no central heating - eek. It was next door to a mad alcoholic with a mad cat - oooh. Baker Lane, remember the name.
Baker Lane was formerly known as Baxter's Wynd, it was a little alley between two of the town's main road. We got a lot of walking traffic going past. Before winter kicked in, it was a place of revelry. We had an open plan downstairs and we all spent most of our time there with the stereo on, so listening to the same stuff. Alex would impose the likes of Macy Gray, Shelby Lynne and Lauryn Hill on us, I had a bizarre affection for twee-indie no-hopers Ooberman, John would restore order and find universal approval with Belle and Sebastian and, above all, the Super Furry Animals. And above all, Guerrilla.
We really did revel. We ate, drank and made merry, had friends round, had parties - it was as good a version of dissolute, wasted decadence as we could muster. All soundtracked by our Furry Friends. Early in the morning to late into the night. Not necessarily the way to endear yourself to a mad alcoholic next door with a mad cat.
'Guerrilla' is rather a disconcerting album - it squelches and stutters, beauty follows torture, absurdity follows grace, you never really know where you stand with it. Baker Lane was a disconcerting place in a way - statistically one of the lowest ranked places in St Andrews, it was cold and dingy and squalid, but we loved it. I hear the album and my senses fill up - the cold, the smell, the dust, the laughs.
It was the first Furries album I listened to repeatedly and the first I bought. I think there are stronger, more consistent works elsewhere - its predecessor, 'Radiator' is an astonishingly consistent and imaginative work. 'Guerrilla' has several songs which are ideas but not exactly full songs, like 'Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home') and 'Chewing Chewing Gum' - it's the sound of some kind of madness. The childlike refrains bounce out at me, almost haunt me. Honestly, if I'd bought the album now, there would have been lots of tracks I'd have skipped, I'd have stuck with, say, Citizen's Band, Do or Die, Turning Tide, Northern Lites, Night Vision, The Teacher, Fire in My Heart, Keep the Cosmic Trigger Happy. But the point is, I'd have been poorer for it. It's the squelches and the creeping oddities which stick with me, which bring back the memories, which make 'Guerrilla' not just the work of a band I like, there for me to assess, but a part of my life and memories.
These days, I still listen to loads of music, and I try to give whole albums a reasonable chance, but I get to listen to music in a controlled, sanitised, environment and I'll inevitably start skipping to the good ones pretty soon if the weird ones don't grab me. Life's too short. Isn't it?
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