England's "Britpop" movement in the mid-1990s has proven to be one of the most enduring music trends of recent memory. Checking the local club listings will reveal all sorts of dance nights aligning themselves with "Cool Britannia," Creation Records and the like. Not many of the bands from that time are still together and making music though. The two stewards of the movement, Blur and Oasis, continue to release records now and then, although the make up of each group has changed somewhat since their respective heyday. If you were asked to name the most prolific artists to come out of the UK during that time period, you'd probably be too busy trying to recall all of Damon Albarn's side projects to perhaps even think of Welsh prog-rockers the Super Furry Animals. But the band has released seven albums since 1996, three other compilations or remix albums, a slew of b-sides and a few E.P.'s for good measure. Gruff Rhys (pronounced Griff Reese), the man responsible for writing a majority of those songs, recently released his second solo album and took the time to answer some of DCist's questions before a gig last week at the Rock and Roll Hotel.

Gruff, you're touring behind your recently released solo record, Candylion, but before we get to that, I want to talk about your "other" musical venture, the Super Furry Animals. The band been together something like 14 years, right?

Yeah. We started doing demos and stuff in 1993.

OK. So if a band has been together that long, is it inevitable that someone from the band is going to do a solo project?

I think so. Sometimes you need to make some solitary work, you know? We’re all pretty busy doing bits and bobs. Because we’ve been together for a long time we’re really strong. We’ve never really stopped touring or recording.

Yeah, you guys are perpetually busy. This year is really no different seeing as how you have a solo record and a group record out now. Candylion has gotten some great reviews. It's a bit different from your first solo record.

My first record took a week to record. It was really spontaneous. I didn’t really know I was making a record. I just went to Gorwell Owen’s house and made a bunch of recordings that ended up being a record. I left in a bunch of mistakes because I wasn’t consciously making a record. I didn’t know it until the final two or three songs that it would be a record. But with Candylion, I knew I was making a record, so I took an extra week to define it a bit more. Musically I wanted to base it all around my acoustic guitar. My plan was to make a really quick record of stripped down songs, but I ended up embellishing it quite a lot, putting drums on it. I kind of got excited while I was making it.

Photo by Kyle Gustafson

Gorwell seems to be your go to guy when you need to make a quick recording.

Yeah. He’s so disciplined and he makes you very disciplined. With him, there’s no sitting around. No dead air. He’s like “I thought we were making a record? You’re spending too much time on the phone this week. Come on, we need to put a bass down.” (laughs)

Candylion uses many of the same producers that you use with the Furries. Gorwell, Mario Caldato, Sean O’Hagan…

Yeah. I started it out with Gorwell, and as the record was going along I was getting ideas for arrangements and I love working with Sean O’Hagan and he is very fast as well, but also very original. You can refer to pop references and he knows what you’re talking about because he comes from a love of records rather than an academic background. And I thought the record lended itself to be mixed by Mario, who can also work extremely fast. We mixed it in a week, just working full on. When we mixed Love Kraft in Brazil and we met loads of Brazilian musicians, but we didn’t want to use them onLove Kraft, partly because it was recorded already and partly because we didn’t want to make some colonial, Paul Simon record. But I thought it was a good chance to go back there and mix the record there and use some Brazlian percussionists and also a guy called Kaseem made some beats for me on his Gameboy. And I knew a good flute player there… The ticket to Brazil was the most expensive thing on the record. Once I was there, I could do more in a week than I could in a lot of places.

You sing in English, Welsh and Spanish on this record.

Bad, basic Spanish. Really crap Spanish.

How do you choose the language for each song? Or does the song kind of choose?

A song like "Gyrru Gyrru Gyrru" kind of came fully formed, with a hook, in Welsh. So it would be futile to change it. It means “Driving Driving Driving” and it doesn’t sound as good in English. So I carried on writing that in Welsh.

Yeah, that song reminds me of (Super Furry b-side) “Tradewinds.”

Ah, yeah. They have a similar sort of groove. That’s interesting.

How did you get hooked up with Team Love? You toured with Bright Eyes for a bit, right?

I toured Canada with Bright Eyes last summer, going to places like Saskatoon and Winnipeg. And Nate and Connor offered to put my record out in the US. I was really happy to have people interested to look after my record.

I found it interesting that your solo record has Pete Fowler artwork but the new Super Furry record does not. Why is that?

It was a band decision to do something different, because we’ve been making sleeves with Pete for 10 years. Like you point out, we do go to the same people over and over again, but we go to those people because of their talent. We work with Pete Fowler, Gorwell Owen, Sean O’Hagan, Chris Shaw and Mario Caldato, they’ve all been very integral to the band for the last 10 years and I very much hope we can work with them on different projects again. But it’s good to mix it up. It was really difficult to choose someone who could match Pete’s genius.

Yeah, it seems like it’s a hard enough decision to decide not to use him, and then you have to choose someone new.

Yeah, it was pretty traumatic. But it was a trauma inflicted by ourselves. But I suppose we should try and make records that are different instead of repeating ourselves perpetually.

Hey Venus! seems to be much different than Love Kraft if only because you do most of the songwriting. The vibe of the new record really reminds me of Fuzzy Logic. Lots of short pop songs. It’s you’re shortest record too.

Yeah, the production and everything seems kind of familiar. We mixed it in Rockfield as well, where we recorded Fuzzy Logic. So it did feel a bit like we were making it again. But it’s a very straight up record of songs, recorded quickly. We kind of reacted against the intricate beauty of Love Kraft.

I think there’s some really brilliant songs on Hey Venus! "Baby Ate My Eightball" is one of the best things you’ve done, in my opinion. The backing vocals are brilliant.

That song took loads of twists and turns. The first incarnation had this sort of Miami based rhythm with babies crying and glasses smashing. It was very abrasive. One of the most abrasive and punk rock things we’ve ever done. And then we mixed it three or four times in the end and the final version barely resembles the original. It’s just a song that took a life of it’s own. Bunf is impersonating a police or ambulance siren with the backing vocals.

How do you keep the whole recording process fresh and keep challenging yourselves?

With this record we worked with Dave Newfield. So that was different to start with, to go into the studio with someone new. We’ve become very set in our ways, you know? In the studio we’re like a bunch of old men, so it was good to have someone come in and be like a coach or referee figure. His background is he was a wedding DJ for years. He did like 500 weddings as a DJ. So he knows what makes the whole family move. And Dave works standing up. He got us to do multiple takes of the songs until it physically moved him.

I can see that. This record has a lot of energy.

I think we were going for energy in the songwriting rather than sonic adventure on this record. Which means we’ll probably react to this record by making a sonically adventurous record with no lyrics.

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Candylion is in stores now on Team Love Records.

Hey Venus! is currently available in digital format at the iTunes Music Store.