This wasn't a heritage gig. I still go to gigs, but I haven't been to one where I had to stand up for a few years. These weren't young punks, these were bald 45+ family men, calm and mostly static on stage, calm amid the delirium of seeing the best band in the world get back together to do one of their greatest ever shows.
I don't know how many times I've seen the Furries - it might be up to about 10 now, plus Gruff Rhys about 5 times. I first saw them at the same Brixton Academy 14 years ago - that was a great gig too, they were still in their prime then, touring one of their best albums, Rings Around the World. They've never not been great, but late on they'd become less thrilling, no one could deny that their last three albums were less ... crowd-pleasing ... or just plain good. They weren't as good.
Well, this week's setlist suggested they didn't deny it themselves. No songs from Dark Days/Light Years, no songs from Hey Venus!, one, a pulsating Zoom, from Love Kraft. 1, out of 25 songs, from the last third of their career. No one complained.
No one really complained about the 5 songs from Mwng, their Welsh language album, since the reunion was putatively for the re-release of that album, and those songs are really nice. Indeed,
Ymaelodi รข'r Ymylon stands with their best. There was a little more chatter, sure, when those songs were being played, but, only a little, and anyway, it's hard to sing along in a language you don't speak.
For the rest, people sang along. People danced. Many probably cried. Because it was like that, it was a bit special. They played what you'd hope they'd play. They played Ice Hockey Hair 3rd and Demons 5th, just in case anyone wasn't sure that this was going to be the greatest gig ever.
It's not like the Furries only have 20 great songs, 20 songs which will make 1000s of people feel like the gig has been curated just for them. I'm going to prove it. Here's a 25-song SFA gig setlist entirely made up of songs they didn't play on Friday. It's still awesome. [bit geeky this, I know. Hope I'm not losing you].
God! Show Me Magic
Herman Loves Pauline
Fuzzy Birds
Presidential Suite
Atomik Lust
Chupacabras
Out of Control
She's Got Spies
Citizen's Band
Dacw Hi
Helium Hearts
Show Your Hand
Gathering Moss
Play it Cool
Turning Tide
Ysbeidiau Heilog
Bad Behaviour
Guacamole
Bass Tuned to DEAD
Venus and Serena
The Undefeated
Keep the Cosmic Trigger Happy
It's Not the End of the World?
Calimero
For Now and Ever
Come on, now, that's still basically one of the best gigs ever, but you've probably spotted the gaps and seen what they actually did play. They played the hits, the Number 12 and 14 hits, they played Northern Lites, Juxtapozed With U, Fire in My Heart, Something 4 the Weekend, If You Don't Want Me to Destroy You, Rings Around The World, of course they played The Man Don't Give a Fuck.
It's lovely to be reminded that I'm not the only one who thinks as highly of these songs as I do. Several reviews have mentioned Ice Hockey Hair casually as "maybe the best song of the 90s" (as if the journalists in attendance got together and decided to throw that in ... I thought I was the only person that thought that. It is, of course it is. It's better than Good Vibrations.
The refocusing, the clear thinking about what their most crowd-pleasing songs are, Gruff's new songwriting surge on Hotel Shampoo and American Interior, surely hopes can be high that they'll get it right if they record again, that they've got at least one more classic in them.
They sound like the Furries again, glorious, ever-changing, scary and challenging at times, tight, euphoric, despite the grim night before (Gruff made brief reference to the misery of it all. And the phrase kept going through my head... We've got the best songs. We've got the best songs ... they've got Mike Read and Gary Barlow ... it's worth the current despair of being left-wing just for this).
Next month I'm seeing Blur. Blur have got a new album, a really great new album which I very much want to hear, but I don't know, I don't know if they'll top this. I don't know if they can. I know who the second best British band of the last 20 years are, and I know who's the best. Now that you're here, tell me you're a non-believer ..
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