Super Furry Animals to play first tour in a decade

Super Furry Animals have announced they will embark on their first tour in over a decade next May.

The Welsh rock band are the latest 1990s group to reform in the wake of Oasis and Pulp, and will play a six-date tour starting in Dublin, after which they will head to Glasgow, Llandudno, Cardiff and Manchester, with a final performance in London.

The band, whose members hail from Cardiff, Bethesda and Bangor, have not performed together since December 2016.

They will also release a 20th anniversary reissue of their 2005 album, Love Kraft, as well as a cut of previously unreleased music on the eve of tickets going on sale on 3 October.

Band members Huw Bunford, Cian Ciarán, Daf Ieuan, Guto Pryce and front man Gruff Rhys will perform songs from their nine albums.

The band formed in Cardiff in the early 1990s, and found fame in 1996 after the release of their album English-language Fuzzy Logic, and grabbed headlines for their unusual promotional tactics, including the famous Super Furry Animals Tank, giant inflatable bears and Yeti costumes.

They had another eight albums between then and 2009, including Rings Around The World, which was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2001 and featured Sir Paul McCartney eating carrots and celery.

They built a formidable reputation as a live act, and at one time had personalised a tank for performing at festivals which Rhys said they eventually sold to Eagles singer Don Henley, a collector of military vehicles.

In 2010 the band went on a five-year hiatus, and despite playing a few gigs in 2015 and touring the UK and North America the following year, there has been no new music since Bing Bong, a single celebrating Wales qualifying for the 2016 Euros.

Rhys has released nine solo studio albums, a film score and an opera, and joined Gorillaz on stage at a gig in east London earlier this month.

The other four musicians have been playing together as Das Koolies since 2019, releasing two well-received albums.