So. Were the Super Furry Animals actually any good?

I've seen them 12-15 times over the past fifteen years. You never know whether you'll get the Rock Super Furry Animals, the Hippy Super Furry Animals, the Nosebleed Techno Super Furry Animals or something else.

This time, we got a cool, relaxed, friendly amalgam of all three. Most shockingly, we got the Beardy, Blues, Fleet Foxes version - under the synths and lasers were blues riffs and gentle harmonies. All conversation from the band was in Welsh, and Gruff waved a succession of increasingly cryptic posters. He also is apparently still as desirable as he was in 1994, according to my comrades Aimee and Vicky. The first half showcased their pastoral, mountain-man side, and the second amped up the volume and the tempo considerably: their subversive hit 'The Man Don't Give A Fuck' got the crowd surfers up and the room, friendly enough already, became euphoric.

Euphoric, that is, except for the guy in front of me, who was engaged in text warfare with his ex-partner, who seemed to believe that he wasn't taking the welfare of their daughter seriously. Perhaps she was right - his final text was 'Whatever. Can't text left-handed. Beer in my right hand'.

The support act was Cate Le Bon - we saw only a few minutes, but enough to convince me that she's worth checking out.

It was one of the best gigs I've ever been to. The crowd was cool, amiable and remarkably diverse (in age - almost everybody was a Welsh-speaker, and Bangor seems to have become much more Cymru Cymraeg since I was a student there). The band were clearly relaxed and happy, determined to make sure everyone had a good time, and they weren't at all self-indulgent, as a band coming home might have been. A triumph.