The Peth - The Golden Mile

by Daniel Whelan

Twin Town for the ears

"Ifans has a decent rock voice, which is nicely contrasted and complimented by other band members, who give the harmonies and backing vocals a nice West Coast sheen."

The Peth’s frontman is actor Rhys Ifans, the “masturbating Welshman” from Notting Hill. Actors do not really have such a great track record when it comes to releasing rock records, probably because rock fans tend to want to believe in the authenticity of their favourite bands, and actors pretend for a living. However, most actors aren’t former members of Super Furry Animals, like Ifans is, nor do they have current members of Super Furry Animals (SFA drummer Dafydd Ieuan is The Peth’s guitarist) involved in their musical side projects.

As you can probably imagine, if you like Super Furry Animals, you’ve already got a headstart with the Peth. Their debut album, The Golden Mile, is an eclectic bag of pop, MOR album rock, epic indie and even electro, and is good enough to hope that they’ll get to make a second one. ‘Half A Brain’ sounds like Duran Duran, and the effective, weary ballad ‘Stonefinger’, appropriately enough, like Badfinger. It’s not at all what you’d expect a film star to come up with. It’s absolutely what you’d expect a Super Furry to produce; unpredictable but also strangely commercial.

The Super Furries connection is never more evident than on the inventive production of the record, and occasionally the listener is left wondering if perhaps ‘The Golden Mile’ would not be making such an impression if the production was less interesting; there are a few songs that might be a little underwhelming without it, and the one true dog of a song on the record, ‘Sunset Veranda’ is still worth a listen, but only for the frenetic production.

Elsewhere, there are a few dodgy titles – ‘69 Fanny Street’ and ‘Flock of Zeigheils’ are the worst offenders, but thankfully the songs bearing those names are strong. Ifans has a decent rock voice, which is nicely contrasted and complimented by other band members, who give the harmonies and backing vocals a nice West Coast sheen; this works especially well on ‘Let’s Go Fucking Mental’ – other rubbish title made sweet and even possibly radio friendly by having someone other than Ifans sing the title lyric.

‘The Golden Mile’ remains far from an essential purchase, but is certainly worth a punt. There’s potential in The Peth, and in terms of records made by actors, it’s by far the best.

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