Full pelt!
The ’80s alt-crossover misfits raise the roof. By Andrew Perry.
“Which Furs will they be – the pop one or the weird, druggy one?”
The Psychedelic Furs Roundhouse, London
THEY WERE a band out of time. Best described initially as the Teddington Velvets, The Psychedelic Furs were a cool underground group whose superior musicianship, inventive arrangements and very name jarred with post-punk’s early ’80s predilection for scratchy alternatives. Critically reviled, they were effectively driven into the embrace of corporate America, for whom they met their quota of radio hits, but ultimately fell apart in disillusionment at the slow eradication of their original vision.
Now transported from such battleground hysteria, they’re the definitive case of postmillennial heritage rock allowing for a more accurate appreciation of a band’s strengths. First tilted at the US, tours soon shifted focus towards their edgier early material (see 2012’s complete performance of 1981’s Talk Talk Talk). This latest run of sell-out shows was announced alongside news of a nearfinished first album since 1991’s World Outside.
Arriving at a buzzy Roundhouse on a rainy Saturday night, you wonder: which Furs will they be – the pop one, or the weird, druggy, subterranean one? As the contemporary line-up, which features only brothers Richard Butler (vocals) and Tim Butler (bass) from their inaugural years, open by blasting out the blaringly convoluted riff to Dumb Waiters off Talk Talk Talk, they seem all set to plunge into their darker side. An impression reinforced by Midnight To Midnight-era saxman Mars Williams already parping deliriously, and Butler Sr, now 63, pogoing like a teenager between barked lines like, “They just wanna suck you into being one of them”.
Here, it’s manifest how brilliantly the OG Furs walked the line between outright punk menace and the more artfully strange Velvets/ Bowie/Iggy/Roxy pre-punk tradition. In loose black suit, black shades and over-sized Harry Hill white cuffs-andcollars, Richard Butler channels the Thin White Duke most, thanks to his vocal poise and strikingly absurdist choreography.
The triumph of this current incarnation, though, is how they blur the lines between their own former glories. Love My Way, superficially a smoocher featuring Butler’s first proper croon, unsettles as electric guitar, alto sax and synth triple-track each other for a super-oddball amalgamated sound. Williams, a little man with giant lungs, transforms Sister Europe into a spellbindingly sax odyssey, while hits like Heaven and Pretty In Pink are dispensed with juggernaut intensity.
All ears focus hard on Boy Who Invented Rock & Roll, the sole new composition: its first half stumbles on a contorted Scary Monsters-ish time signature, before resolving into a near-spiritualjazz coda – the Furs finally making the right noises at the right time.
It was surely only the fact that this singular group stopped, 12 years in, that prevented them rivalling The Cure as their era’s misfit geniuses. As a maximum-blammo India threatens to detonate the Roundhouse, it’s clear: the Butlers’ combo was ever a band out of time – but a great one.