- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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11 years into their career, SFA have produced some of their most beautiful songs yet.
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Hey Venus! is the most concise album in the band's history.
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It's fair to say the songs lack the epic sweep of the last couple of albums, but there's still little about Hey Venus! to fault beyond the faint whiff of musical conservatism.
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By far the tightest record SFA has released since "Radiator"--boasting no song over five minutes and four clocking in under three--this is a concise, song-oriented record, which is somewhat ironic since it began its life as something as a concept album.
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The only shortcoming is how quickly it's all over. Roll on number nine.
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When all these cuts add up, we wind up with an album’s worth of pleasantries.
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What Hey Venus! ultimately is, is a good record of classy pop/rock songs, arranged and produced well, shot through with a degree of personality and skill, and almost completely lacking in the inspired, eclectic madness which made "Radiator and Guerilla" so damn good.
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This is a band that is as strong as ever and on the pleasurable Hey Venus! sound downright terrific.
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Hey Venus! is everything its predecessor was not: immediately likeable, swiftly paced, and mercilessly brief.
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It's unabashedly a pop album, and by restraining its inventiveness, the band maintains a warm of sense of Zappa-esque liveliness.
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Hey Venus! is conspicuously short and sweet, and as a result among the greatest things they've ever done.
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Under The RadarDependability is ultimately the albatross one acquires after a career of brilliance. You know what you’re going to get. And what you get with Venus is plenty great, and, like their manufactured counterparts in dependability, more than worth the investment. [Fall 2007, p.83]
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Hey Venus! is like a really good haircut: it's brisk, light around the ears, and after so many 'do permutations it's bound to get some compliments about how civilized it looks, how grown up.
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Hey Venus!, then, is not the type of progressing heavyweight that has marked the output of later day Super Furries. As a shorter, lighter effort, though, it is every bit as tantalising, thickly coated in SFA-brand special sauce and still worth its weight in goal.
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SpinThe lower-key approach pays off here. [Sep 2007, p.138]
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The first half of Hey Venus! is the band’s most sustained barrage of hooks and video game psychedelia in years. However, the album soon descends into epic overtures like the ponderous “Battersea Odyssey” that lose some of that creative spirit.
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The latest from this genre-bending Welsh band is largely a smoothed-out pop record, reining in some of Super Furry Animals' more left-field tendencies and tenderly nurturing the catchy, chart-friendly hooks of Gruff Rhys and company.
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There's a newfound depth of feeling in their eighth-album expertise that bitters the sweetness of Beach Boys tributes like 'Show Your Hand.'
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Hot PressIf the last 10 years have taught us anything, it's that Super Furry Animals march resolutely to their own quixotic beat.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 34 out of 39
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Mixed: 2 out of 39
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Negative: 3 out of 39
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LiamRFeb 24, 2008
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EmilyW.Feb 12, 2008
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LizJan 22, 2008Pure pop joy. It would get a 10 if it wasn't so short.