I’ve been struggling to remember – did I somehow get into Psych Furs before Forever Now, or was I one of those MTV-influenced johnny-come-latelies who first caught on to them when “Love My Way” was released as a single and a video in October 1982? Yeah, it was the latter. But when I fell for them, I fell hard.
Other than just taking a chance on a record I might have seen in the stores, there weren’t any reason I’d have discovered this before “Love My Way.” They hadn’t really released any singles in the US, and if they had, the radio stations I had access to weren’t likely to have played them. (Maybe WAER, then a very progressive college radio station that did, after all, introduce me to The Clash – but I didn’t listen to that all that much.) By 1982, MTV was where we were getting most of our new music information. (That and the occasional copy of Trouser Press – which I’ve just rechecked to find they were most unkind to The Psychedelic Furs.)
So it must be that I bought “Forever Now” and then immediately doubled back to “Talk Talk Talk,” released the year before in 1981. I have really strong memories of belting along to “Pretty in Pink” in our last year at college, well before it was a hit (in a remade form) associated with the John Hughes film. The same with “Into You Like A Train” and “I Wanna Sleep With You,” strong post-punk that really fed into the confusion and anger and energy that I was feeling at 22, in my final year, not knowing what the hell I was gonna do with my life in any sense whatsoever. Richard Butler’s angry bark really resonated with me, and the band’s layered deep psych noise really spoke. And even after I had long left that confused, dark mental place well behind, these songs continued to resonate. Psych Furs aren’t an ever-present group for me, they’re not always in the rotation, but everycouple of years I rediscover them and go deep. playing everything I have over and over for a few weeks.
In fact, this year’s listen has seen me playing not only the vinyl that I have but a CD collection called “Should God Forget,” which includes material from some later albums that I didn’t ever buy. Those songs come pretty late in the list so it may be that I haven’t heard the whole thing all that often, but this week I’ve found two songs from those later records that suddenly really connect with me, “Torch” and “Get A Room,” both of which I’m busily figuring out how to sing and play myself.
So yeah, this is a perennial favorite for me.
