No more quotes from Yeats landed in the comments box today, sadly, but there is a pretty interesting discussion about Super Furry Animals over by the "Hey Venus" blog. I thought Vince, especially, deserved a response to this question: "No one who has listened to it has mentioned if there is any of the 'strangeness' factor in it; one of my personal reasons for loving the group. Is there none?" I haven't played the record for a couple of days, but from memory there isn't much that could be described as "strange" - a bit of a nebulous quantity, obviously, but I get his gist. In fact, maybe the lack of "strangeness" is the key reason why I find "Hey Venus" vaguely disappointing. The Super Furry Animals' knack for writing nagging, memorable pop tunes is certainly there, but they don't stretch those hooks into the more adventurous shapes that you find in their best records. I'll play it again, and see. One thing I can fairly confidently call strange is the first single from Effi Briest. I was drawn to this one after reading something in the NME this afternoon that featured them alongside disparate Wild Mercury Sound favourites Howlin' Rain (new album due soon, excitingly) and Pissed Jeans. Effi Briest don't sound much like either of those two, but I can just about buy the idea of them as, ahem, "flower punk". Essentially, they're a largely female bunch from Brooklyn who've managed to hybridise the prevailing strains of art/dance/post-punk and something weirder, more tribal and hippyish. Tremendously fashionable, clearly, and you could plausibly place them as a more commercially viable, linear manifestation of that Gang Gang Dance, Black Dice, maybe even Animal Collective (I'll write about their new album soon, too) scene. It's good, anyway. One song consists entirely of palindromes (apparently: I am copying this from the press release and am too busy to check. There's a job for the weekend). Another is a great cover of "The Newlywed Song" by Jim Pepper, whose work I've only previously encountered when I became obsessed with the song "Witchi Tai To" and discovered that his version was the first version. I spent a long stupid night downloading every version of the song, starting with great ones by Harper's Bizarre and Future Pilot AKA, taking in a lusty Quebecois version and finally grinding to a halt with an ambient techno treatment by Pal Waketaar out of A-Ha. But, God, I digress. Here's their Myspace

Just having a look through your recent comments while i wait for the troops to make it back from Glastonbury and Knowsley Hall. Thanks, as ever, for your comments; even Madison, who appears to have spammed the recent Richard And Linda Thompsonthread with a hunk of WB Yeats. Cheers for that. Some superfans grappling with the tracklisting of that "new" Richard and Linda live album there, interestingly. Meanwhile, Rhysi has responded to my slightly conflicted Super Furry Animals preview. "They'll be transcending expectations with the other two albums they're working on," he writes. "I thought Gruff described Hey Venus! as 'middle of the road' compared to the other two...they'll never be middle of the road though will they, not even if they tried very very hard?" Super Furry Animals were actually the only thing I saw over a weekend of scrupulously avoiding the BBC's Glastonbury coverage, when they played a sweet version of "Northern Lites" in, according to Gruff, the style of Big Star. Instead I went on a bit of a Robert Wyatt binge, particularly, as ever, "Rock Bottom", then came back to 2007 with the new Caribou album. When Dan Snaith worked as Manitoba rather than Caribou, I was really taken with his "Up In Flames" album: it mapped out a kind of post-electronica course for the rearing psychedelic music of Mercury Rev and their ilk, I thought. Since he changed his name, though, Snaith has swerved away from that path a little. "Andorra", his new one, is essentially a lavish and radically improved version of the formula he started on "The Milk Of Human Kindness". Rather than spinning off from the cosmic American model, this Canadian's starting point nowadays is the more baroque, chamber end of psych: The Left Banke, maybe, and definitely lots of The Zombies. "Desiree", or at least its middle passage, could have been lifted straight from "Odessey & Oracle". Its beginning, though, is kin to Dennis Wilson's "Lady", while its ending is a spangly deconstruction of the melody, reiterating Snaith's kinship with some of the cannier electronic artists like Four Tet. Snaith's voice is no match for Colin Blunstone or a Wilson, unfortunately, and some of his slightly limpid contributions detract from the excellence of these songs, and the inventive, organic/processed productions. It's an immensely pretty album; listening to it is like admiring very intricate and elegant scenes through a thick heat-haze. Snaith has a really gushing way with a tune, as on the opening "Melody Day" (playing on Caribou's Myspace) and on the gorgeous, languid "She's The One", a duet with Jeremy Greenspan of the (somewhat overrated, I reckon) Junior Boys. He's got a really good balance between melody, atmosphere and gentle experimentation here, I think, which makes "Andorra" one of those albums which is very easy to listen to, but also one which slowly reveals itself as being built out of countless subtle, filigree textures. "Niobe" is some airy hybrid of '60s chamber psych and My Bloody Valentine that evolves into these great acid peaks. It's great.

As the sun sinks slowly into the west, we bid you a fond farewell from Knowsley Hall. We catch a smidgeon of The Zutons set -- another bunch of local heroes loved by the mud-caked audience. We're distracted, in fact, by Suggs, who shoves a much-needed beer into my hands. He's spent three days at Glastonbury. "I had a hotel room," he confides, "but didn't spend much time there. The missus was away, so I took the kids." Manfully, he and the rest of Madness put on the festival's undoubted highlight, though The Zutons certainly went down the provervbial storm. Of which, incidentally, there has been much thereof this weekend -- though the locals have braved the inclement weather with aplomb. With Keane currently putting on a fine show as tonight's headline act, it seems a good idea to drag this tired body in the direction of the nearest cab. Which, incidentally, May and I hope we find -- the eight mile walk back to our hotel doesn't bear thinking about!

Our fearless Picture Editor May Starey has been out shooting the great unwashed. Here's a selection of her best pictures...