With the backdrop of a upcoming EU referendum in June, erstwhile Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys re-emerged last week with a love letter to the EU (‘a 60 year old woman with ideals’) and the genuine ‘friendships I’ve felt as a touring musician living in the EU, as a child of the 1970s is all I’ve ever known”.
With an undulating Casio bed of synths and a multicolored carousel of bleeps, it’s clear it’s a song that nods to Jarvis Cocker‘s politically charged solo debut ‘C*nts are still running the world’ and the sophsti-pop of latter period Roxy Music. While Gruff tenderly croons sensually about the EU, personifying and extolling her cultural ‘sophistication and panache’ and ‘diversity’, glorious sights and scenes, and wittily, how she liberating him from ‘pie and mash’. Crucially, how she protects our human rights, from city bankers running riot, and most importantly, strengthens bonds between us as people. The repeated chorus of “I need EU/I Love EU” sounding without the words at hand like he’s singing I love you, it’s another typical vocal and harmonic slight of hand from the master Rhys. As Gruff puts it best himself: “It’s basically just an attempt to make an emotional case for mother Europe, this flawed, fantastic, potentially Utopian mega-club that I’ve been lucky enough to grow up in.”
It’s an achingly prescient and touchingly gorgeous antidote to Brexit, from a marvelously idiosyncratic songwriter. Well, he’s convinced me.
