Phantom Power by Super Furry Animals

Phantom Power, Super Furry Animals' sixth studio album, came out on Epic on 21 July 2003, and it's the Cardiff band doing everything in-house for once: cut at their own AV Happenings studio, and for the first time the band sat behind the desk too, handling both production and engineering. The plan was a ten-song concept record played entirely in a D-A-D-D-A-D guitar tuning, but they tore up that rulebook during the sessions rather than box themselves in, and went instead for songs that simply hang together better than on their earlier albums.

Gruff Rhys sings about broken relationships and war, and the music roams from country rock to techno with an acoustic guitar holding most of it together, while Cian Ciaran's keyboards and Dafydd Ieuan's drums keep nudging it off the road. Mario Caldato Jr. mixed it, it arrived on CD, vinyl and DVD at once, with a surround mix on the disc, and plenty of critics called it the best thing the band ever made.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.