Ever wondered what the Super Furry Animals get up to on tour? The sex, the drugs? The indie rock ’n’ roll? Well, according to SFA frontman Gruff Rhys, the one boundary of decadence most often pushed is the pilfering of vast quantities of hotel toiletries. Such was the childlike enthusiasm and wonder with which Rhys approached professional touring after the band signed with Creation in 1996, he’s been collecting hotel shampoos as mementos ever since. But what to do with your haul when there’s only so much hair to wash? Of course! Build a miniature hotel out of them and then name your third solo album after it. He’s a peculiar fellow.

Still, as ever, there’s considerable method in his quirk. Songcraft and ideas too – the eleven tracks on Hotel Shampoo move in such effortless melodic patterns so as to charm the casual listener, but also brim with enough oddball invention to satisfy SFA devoties. ‘Honey All Over’ is a prime example. While initially it seems to lope along unremarkably (if very pleasantly) with instantly claimable Beatles-esque hooks, bar-room piano and a casual air of plaintive loss, subtle mischief lurks. Xylophones and a keyboard, whose sound is pitched somewhere between ‘Turning Japanese’ and an 80s arcade game, are joined by lines like “it’s the stickiest situation”. Rhys couldn’t possibly just play it straight – as anyone who heard 2008’s Neon Neon collaboration with electronic artist Boom Bip or last year’s bizarre psych-protest outing with Brazilian VCR repairman The Terror of Cosmic Loneliness will be aware – and he’s far the better for it.

Elsewhere, Rhys’ attention deficit is sated by treating genre as a hot potato. ‘Sensations in the Dark’ is funk-infused Latin art-pop, like War’s ‘Lowrider’ mixed with Bowie’s ‘Sound and Vision’, while the very next track, ‘Vitamin K’, is serene 60s baroque-pop, with strings abundant and Rhys resplendent in his balladry. Meanwhile, the fuzzy guitars, siren whirs and horn accompaniments mean “Christopher Columbus” could be Os Mutantes – perhaps a nod to his stint in Brazil last year – covering Ariel Pink. There’s even space for a scratchy throwback to the alt-rock days of SFA prototype Ffa Coffi Pawb, although ‘Patterns of Power’ is mercifully performed in English.

Such a schizophrenic realisation of Rhys’ songwriting palette could sound overcooked, or worse contrived, but cohesion is offered by the warmth of his increasingly honeyed croon (and occasional falsetto) – sometimes jocund, sometimes grave, but always gently recognisable, like an invisible framework upon which more esoteric whims can be fashioned. Indeed, by far the least arresting track on the album, ‘Sophie Softly’, is the only one in which no hidden treasures emerge – no funk bassline high in the mix, no clicks, spits and beeps, no chiming cowbell. It’s the idiosyncrasies that make Gruff Rhys great; you wouldn’t change him for all the hotel shampoo sculptures in Wales.