Super Furry Animals singer-guitarist Gruff Rhys tells Maya Singer of the Dallas Observer that their 2002 album ‘Rings Around the World’ is both an album about loneliness and–especially–an album about conflict. “I don’t know how not to write about the things going on around me in the world,” Rhys explained. “But I guess I write about them in a particular, personal way. Like ‘Liberty Belle’–it’s about a girl, but it’s really pretty much about the Bush administration. Belle has these very noble ideals, that result in complete and total devastation. Because she’s forgotten the mistakes of the past, and so she’s making them again. But, then, in a bigger way. I guess it’s also a song about the simple idea that people should respect each other as individuals, but humans everywhere are fu**ing that up right now. And the result is war; the result is poverty.”

Moira McCormick of Metromix.com reviewed the Super Furry Animals show at Metro on Wednesday, saying they “proved that their symphonic, yet cheekily arch, trip-pop songcraft indeed merits acclaim.” McCormick added the group’s “current material was musically lush, layered, inviting—and rather deceptively sunny for a band that makes it clear it is fed up with the way things are.” Metromix.com has since removed the article.