1980@40: THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS

UK and Australian cover.

 This is the kind of album a band makes when they've developed a good following as a live unit and have fans who know songs by title. They are exciting on stage and a good gig leaves a buzz. Then they get picked up by a record company, go into the studio and produce a very clear image of their creative output and realise that it's a lot of vibe surrounding one great song.

The Pyschedelic Furs were far from one hit wonders. Their chart success bore them for a good half decade which is more than most bands get. They had a distinctive sound and a singer whose voice could not be mistaken for anyone else and enough force behind the songwriting to keep hitting. And they started interestingly, adding a sax that shoehorned bebop melodics into a four on the floor rock beat and extended the post punk force into atmosphere. X Ray Spex had done something similar with the same instrument a few years before but this was a real development. So, wouldn't their debut be that kind that pops out so that whatever else they do they will always have this? You'd think.

I'm not doing a track by track on this one because when you listen to the songs as constructions of lyrics, melodies, verses and choruses most of them don't amount to much and then when you credit the production for adding so much more then that first point glares out even more. India takes too long to build from silence into song and that's the first track. Fall's chanting verses offer a little relief by being different but the next song is much like the one before it and I keep recalling going to any number of gigs where I recognised the name of the band from seeing posters around the neighbourhood, finally seeing them and thinking they were ok but I couldn't tell one song from the next.

There's a lyrics issue here that adds to the wrong side of the signature/samey issue. I remember reading a letter in RAM in the late '70s listing every instance of the phrase "I don't want to" in Elvis Costello's This Year's Model album. There seemed to be hundreds; the letter took up most of the letters page. This album does the same for "stupid". I think it's in every single track. It makes me think that Butler liked it in one song and just kept putting it in, not knowing which were going to make it through and then didn't bother to alter anything for the recording where it is glaring. It's an adolescent word in the context of rock lyrics and drags everything into a feeling of something unfinished.

The other problem here is production. Steve Lillywhite had established his approach in the late '70s twiddling the knobs for the likes of XTC and The Banshees. His approach sounds reasonable enough: enhance the live set so that it sounds like a record, adding whatever studio magic to set it in its time. The only bands whose identity survived this were those with the strongest personalities to begin with (e.g. U2 or Siouxsie). This record sounds like the next job. It's good but it's also mark hitting and time serving. So you get a host of flanged guitars, gated drums and a live style mix where the rasping voice of Richard Butler is often barely on the surface of the sound.

Also, it gets the best song out of the way too quickly. After India which doesn't feel like it means anything more than a chord progression workout and a rant, the big drums and brooding bass kick in with a slow deliberate gait. A heavily flanged guitar fades in with an arpeggio on the 9th. The Sax breathes a smokey agreement with the guitar and Butler comes in with a series of surrealistic vingettes. This grooves into a hypnotic swing and then the chorus knocks down the door with a lower profile than you'd expect and more breathy vocals, "sister of mine, home again" as a wave of flanging rises like a sense of panic. See, I don't care if this doesn't mean anything it's compelling. The video clip I remember seeing on Night Moves while I was sweeping the floor of the loungeroom (do you remember where you were? well, such was my life) and stopped. A mimed band performance in cold monochrome, the band are dressed sharply but not in any ostentatious uniform. Butler wears a Bogart trenchcoat and sings without facial expression, moving lightly as he delivers. This is intercut with pans and tracks of monumental sculptures at such close range that some of them look like they're alive. It's a beautiful blend of strange noir imagery and movement with music both elegant and doom-laden; a perfect dirge for the nascent '80s with their minutes to midnight nuclear clock and social identity removal.

It was on the strength of Sister Europe that I asked a friend to cassette the album for me. I listened to it once through and then just wound it back to that song whenever I put it in. I bought a vinyl copy of the US version of the album with the black and white '60s-looking cover. It had a slightly different tracklist, not that I noticed as I still only played Sister Europe. And then most recently I listened to a download of it in hi-res. It's clearer now what work went into trying to make the songs both distinct and add up to a whole but the best song so fully outclasses every other that the rest falls flat again. What they needed was a push into the songs. That happened and brilliantly. But that's a tale for 1981@40.

US cover