With the possible exception of Damon Albarn, Gruff Rhys of Super Furrys remains the only musician of his generation for whom the ideas well seems to keep refilling. Hey Venus! is no exception. Though you might struggle to keep tabs on the narrative conceit that apparently spawned the Welsh five-piece’s eighth album – young woman leaves her small-town life behind for adventures in the metropolis – it’s there on the bold fuzzpop of RunAway. “I still recall your banking details," Rhys mourns over a tune that stretches out the grubby bubblegum of old Sweet records to Spectoresque proportions.

It's the same era that new single Show Your Hand inhabits, with a single, emphatic power chord bouncing you from a Kevin Ayers-style psych-pop intro into rarefied soft-rock territory, with more than a soupçon of Bacharach-vintage trumpets to seal the deal. Indeed, a rich vein of classicism – backward-glancing but never soft-headed – extends into every corner of Hey Venus!

Were it not for Rhys’s coarse-cut vocals, Into the Night could pass for some accidentally brilliant Turkish Song For Europe entry circa 1978, or a Boney M b-side with what sounds like distorted electric dulcimer darting around Rhys's adhesively catchy chorus.

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You’ll hear the same noise on the more pensive Suckers, one of a minority of tunes on Hey Venus! that might sound out of place on the Terry Wogan show. Of others that fall in the same category, the powerpop of Neo Consumer boasts the best wordless chorus since the Kaiser Chiefs’ Na Na Na Na Na, and reminds you that these pop sophisticates are also one of the world’s best live bands.

You’d think that by now any band that had made eight excellent, innovative albums in their first decade – ten if you include the lysergic campfire pop of Rhys’s solo albums – would be cruising towards a midlife purple patch of South Bank Shows, Radio 4 appraisals and the obligatory box set. Quite why all this has eluded Super Furry Animals is anyone’s guess. Maybe they would have fared better if they had contrived to turn out a couple of duffers – all the better for us to hail their genius when they returned to the schizoid stoner pop of their early years. So far, though, we have no reason to believe that might ever happen. Seasoned Furrywatchers will know this already, but newcomers looking for an entry point could do worse than start here.

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