Phantom Power is the sixth studio album by Welsh indie rock band Super Furry Animals, released on 21 July 2003 by Epic Records in the United Kingdom. The record was originally conceived as a ten-song concept album using D-A-D-D-A-D guitar tuning, but the band chose to abandon this idea during recording as they didn't want to constrain themselves. The group did attempt to create a "more coherent" album than their past efforts by choosing songs which worked well together. Phantom Power was recorded at the band's own studio, AV Happenings, in Cardiff with the Super Furries producing and engineering themselves for the first time. According to chief songwriter and vocalist Gruff Rhys, the album's lyrics deal with "broken relationships and war".
The album, like their previous record Rings Around the World, was simultaneously released on CD, vinyl and DVD. The DVD featured a surround sound mix of the album along with animations, commentary by Mario Caldato Jr. (who mixed the record) and remixes. The majority of these remixes were re-released as the album Phantom Phorce in 2004. Phantom Power was well received, with many critics suggesting it was the best album of the band's career.
The group took a hands-on approach to the actual recording sessions for Phantom Power, engineering and producing themselves for the first time. According to bassist Guto Pryce this involved a fair amount of trial and error as the band "didn't really know what [they] were doing". Soundproof booths were improvised by setting up tents in the office corridors: "we'd record a guitar and it'd sound rubbish and we had to figure out why. So we started experimenting with different tent designs. In the end it was the wigwam that was easiest to put up and sounded best".
right|thumb|alt=Huw Bunford playing guitar while looking to his right, away from the camera. The guitarist has a large beard and is wearing a brown jacket.|[[Huw Bunford wrote the track "Sex, War & Robots" for Phantom Power and also provided lead vocals.]]
The ten song D-A-D-D-A-D concept was eventually abandoned with Pryce stating "we don't like constraining ourselves and if you've got a concept, you're doing that. And we had some other really nice tunes so we just chose the best songs". Many tracks feature close vocal harmonies, with all the band apart from Pryce contributing. Frustration with the George Bush administration and its foreign policy influenced the record with Rhys claiming that he feels qualified to address the subject as United States foreign policy "effectively decides what the foreign policy is in the UK". "The Piccolo Snare" is about "societies torn apart by war and the waste of human life". The track uses the vocabulary of the Falklands War (Tumbledown, Skyhawks etc.) but Rhys claims it is applicable to any war. "Liberty Belle" tells the story of two cartoon characters devised by Rhys, 'Liberty Belle' and 'Memory Lane', the former representing the "bells of freedom", specifically the American Dream, and the latter representing "history's harsh lessons" which Liberty Belle has failed to learn. The song is told from the perspective of a "bird living almost in a parallel universe to humans, oblivious to the gravity of the games which are being played around us", something which Rhys admits to feeling himself much of the time. "Venus and Serena" uses a story of a child who talks to his pet tortoises, Venus and Serena, as he can't communicate with his elders to make a similar point: that people feel alienated from their elected leaders. Both "Out of Control" and "Slow Life" feature regurgitated media buzzwords, with "Out of Control's" "flippant" lyrics designed to create the feel of "an over-dramatic theme to a current affairs programme". "Bleed Forever" deals specifically with the nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster which fell over North Wales, allegedly causing an increase in incidents of leukaemia among children in the area.
However, Rhys has been keen to point out that the record is not a forcefully political one, claiming that most of the band's songs are "fragments of daily life; occasionally politics are a part of that. Super Furry Animals is about exploration, not political campaigning".
Keyboardist Cian Ciaran stated at the time of Phantom Power's release that the band would issue a DVD with every future album, claiming that "this is just the way we make records now". However, the band's next two albums, Love Kraft and Hey Venus!, were not made available on DVD and, in a 2008 interview with Uncut, Rhys suggested that the release had been something of a failure: "no one gave a shit because people just want to rock n' roll!"
The remixes on the DVD version of Phantom Power vary from radical reworkings such as Killa Kella's beatbox treatment of "Golden Retriever" and Wauvenfold's "unrecognisable" version of "Sex, War and Robots", to the likes of Mario Caldato Jr's take on "Liberty Belle" and High Llamas' "Valet Parking" which are merely "spruced up". The majority of the remixes were reissued on CD as the album Phantom Phorce in 2004. According to drummer Dafydd Ieuan the band didn't have the money to pay the artists involved for their remix work so, in order to provide them with royalties, promised to release an album featuring the tracks on their own label, Placid Casual.
Hidden footage of the band firing machine guns can be reached by selecting the song "The Undefeated", waiting 22 seconds until the lettering starts to blink and pressing 'Enter' ('Enter' must be pressed before the lettering blinks for a second time at 24 seconds). Guitarist Huw Bunford has described this footage as being "exactly how it looked on the tin ... noisy, full of testosterone, with pumped up guys in the woods trying to kill furry animals!"
Release
Phantom Power was released on CD, vinyl and DVD on 21 July 2003 in the United Kingdom on Sony's Epic imprint. The album reached #4 in the UK Albums Chart. In America the album was released on 22 July 2003 by Beggars Banquet US. Phantom Power was released on 21 July 2003 in Japan with two additional tracks, "Summer Snow" and "Blue Fruit", added after "Slow Life" at the end of the album. "Golden Retriever" was released as the first single from the album, reaching #13 in the UK Singles Chart, followed by "Hello Sunshine" in October 2003 which peaked at #31. The Slow Life EP was released as a free download from the website of the band's record label, Placid Casual, on 12 April 2004, featuring the title track, "Lost Control" (a remix of "Out of Control"), and the Goldie Lookin Chain collaboration, "Motherfokker". The majority of the remixes from the DVD version of Phantom Power were released as Phantom Phorce on Placid Casual on 19 April 2004. Initial copies of this album came bundled with a CD version of the Slow Life EP.
{|class="wikitable"
! Region
! Date
! Label
! Format
! Catalogue
|-
|rowspan="1"| Japan
|rowspan="1"| 21 July 2003
|rowspan="1"| Epic Records Japan
| Compact disc
| EICP-229
|-
|rowspan="3"| United Kingdom
|rowspan="3"| 21 July 2003
|rowspan="3"| Epic
| Vinyl record
| 5123751
|-
| Compact disc
| 5123759
|-
| DVD
| 202072 9
|-
|rowspan="1"| United States
|rowspan="1"| 22 July 2003
| rev1 = AllMusic
| rev1score =
| rev2 = Entertainment Weekly
| rev2score = B
| rev3 = The Guardian
| rev3score =
| rev4 = Mojo
| rev4score =
| rev5 = NME
| rev5score = 9/10
| rev6 = Pitchfork
| rev6score = 8.9/10
| rev7 = Q
| rev7score =
| rev8 = Rolling Stone
| rev8score =
| rev9 = The Rolling Stone Album Guide
| rev9Score =
| rev10 = Spin
| rev10score = A
Phantom Power received generally positive reviews from critics with a score of 87 on Metacritic, denoting "universal acclaim". while the NME claimed it is the group's "most focussed, energetic pop record since Radiator" and went on to state that "for a band to be hitting such form six albums into a steady career is astonishing". The NME found that Phantom Power compares favourably with the band's previous release, Rings Around the World, losing some of that album's mainstream polish.
There was some criticism of the album with The Guardian accusing the band of "treading water", the album suffering from overfamiliarity as the group's sixth release despite being a "lovely record". In a 2008 interview with Uncut Rhys described Phantom Power as his favourite Super Furries album, although he conceded that all the band's records "have their moments".
Accolades
{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Publication
! Country
! Accolade
! Year
! Rank
|-
| Tutto Musica!
| Italy
| Best 100 albums of the year 2003
| rowspan="10"|2003
| 56
|-
| Iguana Music
| rowspan="2"|Spain
| Best albums 2003
| 89
|-
| Mondo Sonoro
| Best records 2003
| 11
|-
| Bang
| rowspan="6"|United Kingdom
| Bang albums of 2003: Best of the rest
| *
|-
| The Face
| Albums of the year 2003: We also loved
| *
|-
| NME
| Albums of 2003
| 27
|-
| Mojo
| Mojo albums of 2003
| 16
|-
| Q
| End of year lists
| 24
|-
| Record Collector
| Best of 2003: New albums
| 9
|-
| The Village Voice
| United States
| Pazz & Jop Albums of 2003
| 87
|}
<small><nowiki>*</nowiki> denotes an unordered list</small>
Track listing
CD/Vinyl
Personnel
- Gruff Rhys – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards, harmonica, backing vocals
- Huw Bunford – lead guitar, backing vocals, lead vocals on "Sex, War & Robots"
- Guto Pryce – bass guitar
- Cian Ciaran – keyboards, guitar, backing vocals
- Dafydd Ieuan – drums, backing vocals
Additional musicians
- Jonathan 'Catfish' Thomas – pedal steel guitar on tracks 4, 13
- Kris Jenkins – percussion on tracks 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 13, 14
- Rachel Thomas – backing vocals on tracks 3, 4
- Gary Alsebrook – trumpet on tracks 6, 7
- Savio Pacini – trombone on tracks 6, 7
- Rico Rodriguez – trombone on track 13
- Eddie Thornton – trumpet on track 13
- Ray Carless – saxophone on track 13
- Marcus Holdway – cello on tracks 4, 7, 13, 14
- Sally Herbert – violin on tracks 4, 7, 14
- Brian G. Wright – violin on tracks 4, 7, 14
- Gill Morley – violin on tracks 4, 7, 14
- Ellen Blair – violin on tracks 4, 7, 14
- Pete Fowler – Kaoss flanges on track 14
- Neil McFarland – Kaoss flanges on track 14
Remixers (DVD)
- Weevil
- Mario Caldato Jr.
- Killa Kela
- Wauvenfold
- Four Tet
- Massimo
- Boom Bip
- bravecaptain
- Zan Lyons
- Minotaur Shock
- High Llamas
- Llwybr Llaethog
- Bench
- Sir Doufous Styles
- Force Unknown
- Freiband
Production
- Super Furry Animals – production, mixing, engineering, surround sound mix
- Mario Caldato Jr. – mixing
- Jeff Knowler – mixing assistant
- Gorwel Owen – engineering (Rockfield Studios)
- Jason Harris – engineering assistant (Rockfield Studios)
- Tim Lewis – engineering assistant (Rockfield Studios)
- Tony Doogan – engineering (Monnow Valley Studios)
- Sir Doufous Styles – engineering assistant (Monnow Valley Studios and AV Happenings AKA The Sauna), engineering (Wings for Jesus)
- Stuart Hawkes – mastering
Design
- Pete Fowler – illustration
- JMJ@akamushi.com – design
Charts
{| class="wikitable"
!Chart
!Peak<br />position
|-
|Ireland Albums Chart
|12
|-
|U.S. Top Independent Albums
|14