Do you feel alone in your search for answers? Don't worry, you're not.
  Gruff Rhys, 27, and his colleagues from Super Furry Animals have boldly faced up to the same eternal questions, and more than once. They've howled their fury at the moon when life seems so futile, they've lain alone in their beds and questioned their very existence, and they've sat in cold, moist huddles at 3am after raves and wondered why they feel so hollow. What's the meaning of life, they asked then. They ask the same question now.
  "What's the meaning of life?" is the chant they jabber repeatedly during "Smokin'", the first track on their brilliant and new 'Ice Hockey Hair' EP. It's not the first time Gruff has wondered such a thing. The first time he thought about it he came to a conclusion that life was a conspiracy, sponsored, possibly, by reaggae bands. He was seven.
  "My big brother and sister used to have Black Uhuru records when I was a kid and they'd have slogans on them like, 'Life is a test'. So for quite a while I thought life was some kind of test and it was up to me to pass it. But your opinion changes as you grow older. About three years ago I thought the meaning of life was a live-in companion, a ten-speed mountain bike and a good stereo system. Since then it's been a bit erratic. I'm still wondering, really."
  But even before Gruff questioned life, he questioned death. He was five years old when he and his cousin found a book, a science book...
  "It said that the Earth was gonna fly into the sun. Wow! We had no concept of time then, we thought it was going to be in the near future. Next year, next week maybe! We'd never thought about death before and that made us concentrate a bit too hard. We freaked out."
  His muse had been triggered, however, and within the year he had written his first song. Naturally enough for a five-year-old, it was about a train driver reaching the end of his mortal track. It was called 'Dwifn Mynd Yn Hen' ('I'm getting old').
  Since then Gruff and his partners have sung of many things in their increasingly sparking songs. They've sung of the physical, the metaphysical, the earthly and beyond. And now, on songs like 'Smokin'', they're reaching for answers to the big questions, questions that have tortured mankind for all time. Yes, they've stumbled on their own meaning of life. They just want to smoke it. "I just want to smoke it! I just want to smoke it! I just want to smoke it...".
  That's the advice they hurl from the core of 'Smokin'' (imagine the massed ranks of Funkadelic and Black Grape bawling their way through 'Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?' and you're nearly there), the refrain that rains down with even more frequency than the song's central question. Spend a few hours with Super Furry Animals and you begin to see it's advice they've taken to heart.

"'SMOKIN'' COULD BE A REALLY GOOD TRUCK DRIVING SONG," says Gruff with an arched brow. "When they're driving along the motorway, pushing the speed limit, they could be singing, 'I just want to smoke it!', because they want to burn the rubber on their tires."
  He grins. He furrows his brow. He grins again.
  "Or 'Smokin'' could be a rallying cry for the fishermen of Britain if the EC banned smoked mackerel. They'd be out there on the streets protesting and they'd have something to chant: 'I just want to smoke it! I just want to smoke it!' There's many options for that song."
  One option, of course, would be that it's about smoking drugs.
  "Ah yeah. And it would be a very valid one. It does seem ridiculous that you can't do what you want with a plant that grows naturally."
  Super Furry Animals have regularly done what they want with a plant that grows naturally. Indeed, in previous interviews with NME they've done what they want with plants in places as far flung as Colombia, the Balearics and Iceland. But not today. Today we meet in their rehearsal rooms off the Caledonian road in London at midday, and quickly learn just how much travel broadens the mind.
  The animals arrive in the canteen in twos. First guitarist Huw Bunford and electronic whizz Cian  Ciaran, then drummer Dafydd Ieuan and bassist Guto Pryce, and they take turns to sit either side of a tape recorder and stare sleeply at the microphone.
  Together we consider the increasing excellence of their band. We discuss how through their two albums so far, '95's 'Fuzzy Logic' and '97's 'Radiator', they've waged a glittering war on the purism sweeping through modern guitar music. How they successfully carry through the acid house ideal of being able to mix in any sounds or textures they like without retreading the ideas of others, but pull it off within the frame of vibrant songs.
  We talk about how few other British bands could pull off an EP of such varying moods and sounds as their new one. About how sweetly 'Smokin''s warped P-funk slides in next to 'Ice Hockey Hair' and it's fuzzy, yearning, guitar-stroked pop. And how neither of these songs sound odd followed by Cian's spectral instrumental 'Mu-tron', or the a cappella version of 'Smokin'' that closes the EP.
  And we also talk about the quadrophonic sound system that was last hauled into service, rather embarrassingly, by Pink Floyd and that will allow them to blast audiences into submission from every corner of the venues they visit on their forthcoming tour. We talk about stage props, too, like the huge question mark that will appear above Gruff's head with his thoughts projected on to it, and the light bulb that will light up above Bunf. And we talk about how despite are these excesses, they are not hippies because as Cian snarls, "You can trust us."
  We also talk about the meaning of life, the future of rock, their musical ambitions, and how they've taken to performing barbershop quartet harmonies in rehearsals. But we don't get very far. So for further instruction we turn to Gruff, the band's singer, guitarist and principal songwriter.
  It will take a little time to prise any information from him too, though, because Gruff pauses long enough to make a cup of tea and change the cat's litter between each fresh deliberation, and sometimes between each word, and it will take three stabs at it (first in the canteen, then in the pub and finally by phone). Every now and then we're interrupted by one of his two watches telling him the time in Japanese ("I'm trying to learn Japanese subconsciously from it, but it isn't working yet"). But in the end we'll learn a little more about how Super Furry Animals grew from an oddity on the minority language European tour circuit into one of the most exciting bands in the world.