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THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS
BACK IN BLACK

Video didn’t really kill many radio stars. But in its ’80s heyday, MTV was the ruin of many otherwise respectable artists — chief among them England’s Psychedelic Furs, an odd band with an odd name who emerged in 1980, when distinctions among punk, post-punk, and new wave were taken seriously. Fronted by the irascible, debauched Richard Butler, who fused the snarling bile of Johnny Rotten with the romantic croon of Bowie while using the word "stupid" to great effect on nearly every track of the band’s homonymous debut (reissued by Legacy in 2002), the first Furs used more sax then sex and dared to slow songs like "Sister Europe" down to a painfully art-damaged crawl. The beautiful mess of that first disc coalesced into what might now be considered the first modern-rock classic, 1981’s Talk Talk Talk (another Legacy 2002 reissue), whose commercial potential was largely overlooked until John Hughes borrowed "Pretty in Pink" for his tender teensploitation flick. Yet it was the video for the uncharacteristically uncynical "Love My Way" (from 1982’s otherwise bristling Love My Way) that forever froze Richard and his bassist brother Tim Butler in new-wave purgatory. The Furs weren’t innocent victims: they provided MTV with more grist for the video mill on 1984’s Mirror Moves, an album of slick power anthems that filled summer sheds and all but erased the greatness of those first three discs. It didn’t help when Richard, by then a self-parody, jumped the grunge bandwagon in the ’90s to attempt a poorly attended comeback in the unfortunate guise of Love Spit Love.

As unlikely as it seems, the Furs story has taken a turn toward a happy ending: earlier this year, the graying Butlers reunited with original guitarist John Ashton to rewrite their history. Now playing clubs like the Paradise, where they headlined a week ago Sunday, they’re in the right place (intimate clubs) at the right time (a new wave of new wave) with the right songs (the bitterly cynical "President Gas," for example, was written during the Reagan years but is no less relevant today) to remind old friends and new fans that their legacy is richer than an eight-minute club mix of "Heartbreak Beat" might suggest. Indeed, they opened the show, both Butlers back in dark shades and rock-star black, with the driving fury of Talk Talk Talk’s "Into You like a Train," a blunt deconstruction of the love song. Most of the set drew on early Furs material, including the cryptic "Sister Europe," as Richard, who still looks as if he’d been born to front a band, played the room as if it were an arena and got away with it. Yeah, they did the obligatory "Love My Way" and "Ghost in You" (one of the better latter-day Furs tunes). And it was no surprise when they encored with "Pretty in Pink." But anyone who came expecting to see a pathetic washed-up relic of the ’80s would have been sorely disappointed.

BY MATT ASHARE

Issue Date: April 15 - 21, 2005
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