Classic Super Furry tale

The Welsh band were touring several years ago, and decided to make their onstage entrance each night on a golf buggy, to the sound of the A-Team theme.

Then they arrived in Glasgow for a show at the Barrowland, and hit a problem.

"We'd managed to get it into every room on the tour, but obviously the Barrowland was a couple of floors up, and initially the staff were reluctant to let us attempt to get the buggy inside," recalls Furries singer Gruff Rhys.

"When we told them we'd got it in every other venue they took as a matter of urgency to get it in, and made this insane makeshift pulley system on the side wall, and winched it up over the stairs.

"I don't know if anyone in the audience was aware of the sweat and blood that had gone into getting this weird golf cart into the venue..."

The brilliantly creative rockers are back in Glasgow on Tuesday night, at the O2 Academy.

They'll be focusing on the recent re-issue of their fourth album Mwng, the first record the band made in all Welsh.

Released back in 2000, it had fallen out of sight, so the group had been keen to re-release it, and it handily tied in with the group's 20th anniversary, too.

"People have been offering us weird stuff to mark it," says Gruff.

"So we decided we'd just do it ourselves, and do it on own terms, playing some gigs and releasing the record with no pressure...

"With a lot of our albums, we were engaging with the technology of the time, and trying to make pop music in that way, trying to engage with the moment and the equipment that was being used then.

"Even though that's recent history, a lot of those technologies are obsolete already, but Mwng, as an album, is basically a live band in a studio. It's our easiest album to revisit."

The band themselves haven't been seen since 2009's Dark Days/Light Years, instead focusing on a host of solo projects.

Gruff's own work has included his Neon Neon team-up with the producer Boom Bip, and last year's American Interior, a concept album that focused on the life of the explorer John Evans.

Yet they seem to have fitted together again smoothly, which is good news given that the Furries have long been one of Britain's most creative bands.

"It feels really normal to be back," says the singer.

"We're all neighbours, we're within about a square mile of each other in Cardiff.

"So we see each other quite a lot anyway, and with the songs it's been incredible, because we must have them all to memory, given that we haven't played them in six years.

"We must have played them so many times that the hands remember, even when the minds don't."

Gruff's a slow, thoughtful talker who's prone to pauses, meaning you're never actually sure when he's finished speaking. However he's also long been one of pop music's most politically aware writers, and it's not surprising that he's been enthused by the recent surge in support for Scottish nationalism.

"What's happened in Scotland seems very exciting and empowering, politically," he adds.

"On a political level it would be incredibly refreshing to see them (the SNP) have influence.

"I've really enjoyed the leaders debates, and seeing Leanne Wood, Nicola Sturgeon and Natalie Bennett talking a lot of sense, and trying to break the neoliberal stranglehold that's there...

"We haven't had the surge in nationalism in Wales that there has been in Scotland, although there was a vote on more powers for the Welsh Assembly in 2011 and the yes vote passed easily, far more so than the vote in 1997.

"It was overwhelmingly yes, and I think that what's happened in Scotland will reverberate to Wales, it will just take a few years."

He's also got plans for Tuesday's gig, but thankfully there's no buggy this time.

"The best show I'd seen by a band who hadn't played together in a while was Television, and the room was in almost complete darkness," he recalls.

"That way you had no idea what they looked like, and they still sounded like they used to.

"We could have gone that way, but we're more interested in visuals and films, so hopefully it'll be a full on experience."

Super Furry Animals, O2 Academy, Tuesday, £30, 7pm