Psychedelic Furs - The Ghosts Within

The Psychedelic Furs are, at the same time, among the most worthy heirs to the psychedelic tradition and among the most original interpreters of the new wave season born at the turn of the Seventies and Eighties. Their sound indeed fuses the hallucinated liturgies of Velvet Underground (whom they reference from their very name, taken from the famous “Venus In Furs”) and a certain British-school dark shadowiness (Joy Division, Cure, Siouxsie) with the pop melodies and glam romanticism of David Bowie and Roxy Music. A formula made even more striking by the catatonic, morbid delivery of the band's singer and leader, Richard Butler: his distinctive vocal timbre, raw and monotone, lends the songs that extra touch of decadence.

The band formed in London in 1977, at the height of the punk era, on Butler's initiative. He was joined by his brother Tim (bass), John Ashton and Roger Morris (guitars), Duncan Kilburn (saxophone) and Vince Ely (drums). The sextet debuted with the single “We Love You” (1979), which combines darkwave-rooted shadowiness with the electronic atmospheres of Berlin-era David Bowie.

A year later came their LP debut with Psychedelic Furs (1980), produced by Steve Lillywhite. An album built on sounds that are essential yet seductive, often morbidly compelling. Three tracks in particular stand out: the unsettling “India”, which after two minutes of beeps and electronic noise sweeps the listener away with its relentless post-punk drive; the hysterical “Sister Europe”, a kind of atmospheric dark dirge, softened by delicate melodic embroidery and scarred by sax scratches; and the lysergic “Imitation Of Christ”, with its easygoing jangle-pop gait that would set a template for countless disciples of Byrds and company, starting with Rem and Smiths.

But there are other notable moments too, from “Fall”, with its bouncy Northern soul-style rhythm paired with the harshness of the guitar licks, to the X-Ray Spex-style punk charge of “Pulse”, dominated by the drums-guitar-sax triptych, to the unsettling “The Wedding Song”, which evokes the oppressive claustrophobia of Pil and Joy Division while also venturing into a brief proto-rap, right up to the closing assault of “Blacks/Radio”, two tracks joined together, with a pounding pulse and a chaotic Velvet Underground-like atmosphere.

A great debut that allows the London band to burst onto the varied wave scene of the era with originality, while also showing plenty of room for growth.

The formula was perfected a year later with Talk Talk Talk (1981). The record definitively establishes the London band's sonic coordinates. Yet another product of the Velvet-inspired “Venus In Furs”, the Psychedelic Furs' sound turns out to be, more precisely, the crossroads of three cultural and musical traditions: the new wave they draw from for its rhythmic epilepsy and dry, nervous guitar work (a descendant of Tom Verlaine's), as well as its imagery; the dark-punk whose existential mood they borrow; and the psychedelic revival (led in England by groups like The Sound, Echo & The Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes), to which they owe certain instrumental interplay and the overall hallucinogenic atmosphere. Richard Butler's hushed, monotone voice, along with his detached, Lou Reed-like singing style, lends the whole thing a patina of sickly romanticism in the manner of Japan, Roxy Music and the “fallen angel” of “Transformer”. Adding further originality to the songs are Duncan Kilburn's saxophone lines, which manage to bring a touch of restraint to the Furs' constantly obsessive rhythmic bacchanals.

The album's ten gems sustain a continuous emotional tension (one that never actually explodes), occasionally interrupted by Kilburn's elegant saxophone swoons, as in “She Is Mine”, painting a picture of subterranean unease rather than declaimed alienation. These qualities would make the record one of the trait d'union between classic new wave and its synth-pop drift, a path the band themselves would take with their subsequent, still enjoyable and commercially successful work. The album's greatness lies above all in its being a pop vehicle for wave's rhythmic and harmonic experimentation, much as Bowie had been for the avant-garde electronic breakthroughs of the early Seventies. It's remarkable how the Furs manage to harmonically integrate Tim Butler's rough guitar work and Ely's relentless drumming with Kilburn's delicate saxophone textures, creating a sound that is at once fluid and compact.

As in every self-respecting masterpiece, the dance is opened by a manifesto track, in this case the irresistible “Pretty In Pink” which, stripped of its characteristic Velvet-style guitar progression, could almost be a docile Byrds-style power-folk tune, complete with an engaging jingle-jangle - but it isn't. Pounding, sickly yet melodic, it unfolds over roughly four minutes with a fast-slow-fast dynamic, maddening in its ability to ratchet up tension only to abruptly cut it off, and then stoke it again.

The album is primarily a child of new wave, as shown by “I Wanna Sleep With You”, with its merciless Wire-style rhythm section that manages to convey the claustrophobic feel characteristic of Colin Newman's group. The ruckus of “It Goes On” is driven by Vince Ely's powerful, mechanical drumming, out of which suddenly emerges an epic refrain, a model for the many bands (U2's “Gloria”, Tears For Fears' “Shout”) that would take almost exclusively the romantic-solemn-emphatic side of new wave.

The album's secret lies in being steeped in an underlying romanticism that expresses itself through easily digestible pop structures rather than complex compositions, unlike some bands of the era, Japan among them; even in its most agitated songs, the melodic aspect always comes first, as in "Into You Like A Train", where an exotic saxophone motif even manages to defuse the tension built up by Ely's obsessive drumming.

"She Is Mine" is, as well as being a delicate ballad, an admirable exercise in counterpoint technique, with no fewer than three melodic lines overlapping and alternating: the two guitars of Morris and Ashton, and the (omnipresent) saxophone of Kilburn. Android rhythms and assorted dissonances make "Dumb Waiters" one of the bridges between new wave proper and industrial music, while in a gloomy, romantic, fatalistic tone Butler puts the finishing touches on the superb "No Tears", which manages to break free from the dark-punk song template purely through its melodic flow. The album closes with the ballad "All Of This And Nothing", which, steeped in existential spleen, reveals Butler's poetic-decadent streak, somewhere between Ian Curtis and Bryan Ferry.

It's genuinely hard to resist the oblique charm of Talk Talk Talk. Its position in territory inhabited by experimental impulses makes it one of new wave's most compelling artefacts, while its unfolding in a pop language made it easy to decode and absorb: an object that has stood the test of time remarkably well - a classic.

Commercial and record-label pressures bring about the first changes on Forever Now (1982). With Morris and Kilburn gone, the band is reduced to four members and brings in Todd Rundgren at the mixing desk, who smooths out the sound's rough edges and adds a few of his own proteges (saxophonist Gary Windo and Flo & Eddie). The result is, first of all, another triumph: the murky hit single "Love My Way", driven by an epic marimba (played by Rundgren himself) into territory at the crossroads of new wave, synth-pop and Blondie-style disco-punk. An anthem to love that would be reclaimed years later by Luca Guadagnino in the film "Call Me By Your Name" - fittingly, given its fearless dedication to homosexuality ("Love my way, it's a new road/ I follow where my mind goes").

Overall, the sound grows smoother, falling in line with the refined synth-pop of Ultravox, Simple Minds and Japan, all the rage at the time. Yet there's still a link to the first two albums, in the shape of the glittering boogie of "President Gas", masterfully handled by Butler and embellished with a striking instrumental hook. And genuine flashes of class resurface here and there, like the post-funk guitar break in "You And I" and the catchy tongue-twisting ballad "No Easy Street" (“You cry like a baby/ you cry like a babe/ you cry like a lady/ you cry like a girl”), closed out by a scorching guitar solo.

Commercial temptations become more evident on Mirror Moves (1984), with Keith Forsey's production pushing the synthesizers even further to the fore, adding hefty drum-machine backing. Where the experiment works best, the results are flat-out masterpieces. Take the two blockbuster singles, buoyed by a radiant melodic streak and a magical balance between John Ashton's guitar and elegant synth inlays: "Heaven" (perhaps their biggest hit, famous for its video shot in the rain) with its killer chorus and enveloping rhythmic drive, and the aching "The Ghost In You", an enchanting ballad that casts its spell from the gorgeous keyboard intro onward - one that the Strokes would quote 36 years later in "Eternal Summer".

Butler's voice, ever rougher and more magnetic, becomes one of the decade's trademarks, paired with lyrics that remain sharp and disarming, not shying away from political forays either, as in "Here Come Cowboys", a pointed attack on the British government of the day but also on idolized TV celebrities, and "Highwire Days", a brilliant meditation on the paranoia and political phobias of the 80s, set to tense arrangements that recall a more electric version of the Chameleons. Even so, the singer rejects any political ambition: "I like music that helps me understand myself, because when I understand myself I can understand the outside world a little better," Butler told Artist Magazine. "I think when people come along shouting slogans, they don't really help you understand anything, other than the fact that there's a war going on somewhere in the world. They don't help you come to terms with yourself and understand how you can relate to other people."

The band's knack for making songs original and unsettling with the bare minimum of embellishment also remains intact: take the aforementioned "Here Come Cowboys", with its guitar work straight out of Bowie's Berlin trilogy, torn open by sudden string flourishes and its brilliant descending refrain, or the driving, neurotic piano that underpins the vocal interplay of "Alice's House".

Mirror Moves is the album that cements the Furs' status once and for all, their undisputed pop peak: it will break through in both Europe and the United States, where it crosses into the Billboard Top 40. But paradoxically, it will also serve as the litmus test for their internal rifts, exposing irreparable cracks in the project, by then reduced to a trio (the two Butlers and Ashton).

Internal difficulties quickly translate into a drying-up of artistic inspiration. Midnight To Midnight (1987) leans even further into commercial territory, veering toward a disco-ready synth-pop that has by now almost entirely lost the sickly, sinister streak of their early days. The dance-rock hit "Heartbreak Beat" almost apes the AOR dominating the charts at the time, pulling off one last melodic flourish. But the rest of the album lays bare the first cracks in Butler and co.'s songwriting. The frontman himself would later slam the whole project without mercy, calling it "empty, insipid and weak".

Only scraps of their former greatness remain: the jagged guitars of "Shock" and the blurrier ones of "All Of The Law", the horns of "Shadow In My Heart" and "Torture", the rhythm-guitar stabs of "One More Word", the catchy stride of the title track. But perhaps the only truly noteworthy episode is the hyper-romantic "Angels Don't Cry", which stirs together pretty much all the ingredients still left in the band's arsenal: the epic opening guitar melody, the staccato keyboard, Butler's sharp, hypnotic vocal pairing "kiss" and "pain" in the same line, plus guest Mars Williams' sax solo adding a touch that's more crowd-pleasing than jazzy.

What helps revive the band's fortunes (having by then brought drummer Ely back into the fold, after he'd been replaced by Philip Calvert, formerly of the Birthday Party) is the soundtrack to Howard Deutch's film "Pretty In Pink", starring Molly Ringwald, which takes its title from the song of the same name originally released on Talk Talk Talk, also featuring it again on the soundtrack. And, seasoned operators that they are by now, the Furs seize the chance to tack this new version of the song onto the end of Midnight To Midnight.

The subsequent singles "All That Money Wants" (1988) and "Until She Comes" fail to reverse the downward spiral, which reaches its end point with the band's last two albums, Book Of Days (1989) and World Outside (1991). The first still manages to stay afloat, showing some residual signs of life, even if it often takes refuge in self-quotation (the post-punk dissonances of "Should God Forget", the shadowy bass of "Shine", the morbid psychedelia of "Entertain Me", the refined decadence of the title track, the Cale"-esque romantic viola of "Torch"), held together by Butler's unmistakable, trance-like vocal delivery. The second, however, sinks inexorably into predictability, despite co-production from Stephen Street, who had worked excellently with the band on "All That Money Wants". Partly redeeming it are the single "Until She Comes", a classic bittersweet Furs ballad, Ashton's guitar verve on "Don't Be A Girl" and the acoustic flourishes of "Get A Room". But too many songs come across as pale imitations of what the London band had managed to produce over a decade-long career.

And so, it seems, the saga of one of new wave's most original and compelling bands comes to a permanent close. With the Psychedelic Furs disbanded, Richard Butler recruits guitarist Richard Fortus (formerly of Pale Divine) and launches the project Love Spit Love (1994). Produced by Dave Jerden (Jane's Addiction), the self-titled album skilfully blends the old band's classic sound with the more current flavor of American alternative rock. "Am I Wrong", "Seventeen", "Jigsaw" and "Wake Up" are the most effective tracks, while "Change In The Weather" reveals a fervor almost unprecedented for Butler.

Love Spit Love, however, fails to find commercial success. So Butler and Fortus change course, landing on the folk-rock of Trysome Eatone (1997), released by Maverick, Madonna's label. The new touchstones are the acoustic ballads of R.E.M., the electronic rock of the Cars and the decadent melodies of the new British pop (from Radiohead to Suede). This gives rise to songs like "Long Long Time", "Believe", "Well Well Well", "It Hurts When I Laugh" and "Sweet Thing", which alternate between moments of tender melancholy and others that are more restless and charged.

With the Love Spit Love experiment, Butler confirms himself as a classy songwriter, though without ever again reaching the heights of the Psychedelic Furs' golden era.

The former leader, then, tries his hand as a solo artist, with the self-titled Richard Butler (2006), a record built on melancholy, hazy songwriting that doesn't exactly set hearts ablaze but does showcase a few fine songs, starting with the opening "Good Days, Bad Days," which would gain a certain popularity after being featured in the trailer for Susanne Bier's film "Things We Lost in the Fire," starring Halle Berry and Benicio del Toro. A ballad that starts acoustic and turns electric, built around lyrics rich in negative prefixes (unmake, unread, unsay, unwrite, etc.) that seem to express a desire to question himself again, unburdening himself of past responsibilities ("Give back everythings I won"…). An introspective album, almost a single stream of consciousness, barely disturbed by distorted guitars, distant echoes, music boxes and radio voices, where there's room for episodes of delicate softness, like "California" (built on a drone that gains intensity like ocean waves), "Breathe," "Milk," "Nothing's Wrong" and "Second To Second." And while "Last Monkey" leans on electronics with an almost entirely instrumental structure, the closing "Maybe Someday" shows a particularly passionate Butler in a peculiar interpretation, far from his usual standard.

But this solo venture wouldn't leave much of a mark either, and Butler meanwhile turned to other pursuits, including cover versions, such as Charles Aznavour's "She" (for another trailer, this time for the film "Gone Girl"), and from the start of the new millennium he also devoted himself to painting, with gallery shows in New York, Miami and Florence. He also had a daughter, Maggie Mozart Butler, and in 2020 married actress and model Erika Anderson.

The big surprise, however, came in 2020. After a 29-year hiatus, the Psychedelic Furs returned to the scene, and in the best possible way, with Made Of Rain (2020), an album able to bring back that sick, unsettling romanticism that has always been their trademark, despite the years gone by and the absence of guitarist Josh Ashton, replaced here by Rich Good.

The opening is not what you'd expect. Butler's atonal baritone up front, the metallic grain of the guitars and the creeping, megalomaniac, neurotic paranoia of the lyrics make "The Boy That Invented Rock & Roll" a perfect opener, one that almost feels like it's always been part of the British band's classic repertoire. The powerful single "Don't Believe" follows the same path, wrapping a lively synth-pop heart inside it, as does "No-One," which takes a more maximalist, more rock-oriented approach. More ordinary but just as intriguing is "Come All Ye Faithful," with its sinuous, sinful verses, driven by sax and a pulsing bass laying down the melodic line. There's no shortage of noisy digressions, though always kept within a perfectly concentric structure.

The ballads are a different story, since some show unfulfilled potential; that's the case with "Hide The Medicine," "Tiny Hands" and also "Turn Your Back On Me," which leans heavily on guitar feedback and a dreamy atmosphere, while others come off better, like the inspired "Wrong Train," which they'd already played live several times, "Stars," which enchants thanks to a structural richness made of space rock, reverb, granular and derailing sounds, and above all "This I'll Never Be Like Love," which at times recalls Bowie's "Blackstar."

Made Of Rain is certainly not an innovative or revolutionary album, and it doesn't rewrite the story of a band whose story had already long been written, but it adds a small, delightful piece to their journey that fans can't help but appreciate.

Contributions by Giulia Quaranta ("Made Of Rain")

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