Northern Lites

Northern Lites was the first single from Guerrilla, released on 10 May 1999 on Creation, and reached number 11 on the UK Singles Chart. Rhys wrote it. He took the idea from television coverage of the El Niño weather pattern in 1998, and the title refers to the aurora borealis. He had written the melody several years earlier. The band tried reggae and a dirgy rock approach before he wrote the lyrics, and then they tried playing along to a calypso rhythm preset on his keyboard. Rhys has said the song is just about the weather.

It was recorded at Real World Studios in Wiltshire in 1998. The band saw steel drums lying around the studio and added them on the spur of the moment, played by Cian Ciaran despite not knowing how. NME and Melody Maker both made it single of the week. Mojo's James McNair called it one of the most frothily inventive pop confections since Ice Hockey Hair. The video, by the band and Martin McCarthy, is stock footage of curling and Irish road bowling, and Rhys blamed its chart peak on it not having a video. In 2015 a horn trio gave it a frisky mariachi feel at the Cardiff reunion show.