Super Furry Animals, Bethesda, Clwb Rygbi

In all the recent deification of Britpop, the best band of the entire mid-Nineties crop were overlooked yet again. Not that Super Furry Animals were ever so parochial in intent. Their effortlessly eclectic music, which didn't so much look back as look around and take a little bit of everything, from tough techno to Eurovision ballads, managed to sneak through the gaps suddenly opened for new British talent.

In all the recent deification of Britpop, the best band of the entire mid-Nineties crop were overlooked yet again. Not that Super Furry Animals were ever so parochial in intent. Their effortlessly eclectic music, which didn't so much look back as look around and take a little bit of everything, from tough techno to Eurovision ballads, managed to sneak through the gaps suddenly opened for new British talent.

But the Welshmen's personal mythology was concerned with something older and more elemental than 1966 and all that. Frequently singing in their native tongue they managed to represent, and update, an entire culture. Their 2000 album, Myng, scraped the national Top Ten and remains the biggest-selling Welsh language record of all time, yet they've been acclaimed globally none the less.

While the entire South-east of England descended on Eminem's shows in exotic Milton Keynes, their Cambrian counterparts (of all ages) were drawn to a rugby field in the wild North-west to see their biggest band in a huge marquee. Make no mistake, this is a foreign country to soft monoglots, the local language clearly dominant.

It's remarkable just how many excellent songs the quintet have written. A set including selections from their six albums managed to surprise throughout, simply with its consistency. Tonight's set included more Welsh-language tunes than usual, but that concession to the audience apart, the local became universal. Old favourites such as the glorious "Northern Lights" and the anthemic "Mountain People", here performed to its real subjects, were outstanding.

But the crowd seemed just as pleased by the tunes from next month's Phantom Power collection. "Out Of Control" is madly heavy, "Hello Sunshine" boasts a killer melody, while the epic "Slow Life" is the latest Furry classic to weld together the seemingly incompatible genres of wistful balladry and pounding beats.

The jaunty psychedelic surfpop of "Rings Around the World" sat seamlessly alongside the faux-soul of "Juxtaposed With U", while "Calimero" was a furious metallic blast.

It's notable just how good a band they are right now too. Guto Pryce's bass playing is precise without ever being fussy, while Huw Bunford's trademark lead guitar style of simply stripping out unnecessary flourishes in favour of pertinent detail remains instantly identifiable.

As for singer Gruff Rhys, the warmth of his tone renders it irrelevant that you can't tell which language he's singing in.

Their traditional closer, "The Man Don't Give A Fuck" brought the, er, house down. Constructed around a sample from Steely Dan's "Showbiz Kids" (and originally a subject of legal dispute, until Becker and Fagen realised that the song's timeless sense of disgust echoed their own work), it was preceded tonight by a projection of baddies Bush and Blair on the big screen, giving a pointed piquancy to its relentless chant of "They don't give a fuck about anybody else".

An extended electronic breakdown gave the band a chance to show off their celebrated "quadraphonic" sound system as the music swirled around the tent, before they re-emerged for a final refrain. This was a great show by an ever great band.