IT’S been a while since Super Furry Animals released any form of new music – seven years, to be exact – and the Welsh band have waited until the perfect moment to unveil something: a month ahead of their own nation’s football team competing in this summer’s European Championship.
‘Bing Bong’ is not the conventional football anthem, but the elevating pop credentials sang entirely in Welsh were exactly what the band was looking for. Cian Ciaran of Super Furry Animals said that “we wanted to make sure the two ideas could co-exist, it being a Furrys and a football song in one – I think we managed it.”
Ciaran also said, “It’s got the chants, it’s got the tempo changes like you get on the terraces, it’s got a singalong-ability. You never know, but sometimes the most unlikely songs make it onto the terraces. We wanted to write a Furrys song and hope that it makes it to the tournament. It’s like that White Stripes song, “Seven Nation Army” – they didn’t write that as a football anthem.”
The band have stated that they cite the “inspirational rise” of their football team as a way of “emerging from the studio to spread hope and harmony in a reinvention of the totemic, communal anthem.” This track isn’t the official Wales Euro 2016 anthem, however, as fellow countrymen Manic Street Preachers grabbed the honours with their new song ‘Together Stronger (C’mon Wales)’.
‘Bing Bong’ is available on Spotify for streaming, and will be released physically on 12″ vinyl on 17th June 2016. Super Furry Animals will support Manic Street Preachers at Swansea’s Liberty Stadium on 28th May, before a special show in Toulouse before Wales’ first Euro 2016 game on 10th June.
