LP reviewed in Sounds, 25th September, 1982
THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS ‘Forever Now’ (CBS CBS 85909)**** | I SEEM TO have been listening to this album for the whole of my life. “It’s so ethereal, its just like sleeping gas . . . ”
The Furs are a gradual infiltration, a hazy intoxicant. Some of my friends and colleagues —notably McCullough and Slattery will tell you that the (Eric) Psyckes are a group with no fun, no function, no finesse and no future. This is merely wishful/wilful thinking on their part.
The Psychedelic Phurs are as useful and as functional as you allow their music to be, and — as my friends know — I’m very permissive! I like to use ‘Forever Now’ in hundreds of little ways, just as I use Simple Minds, UK Decay, Yazoo, KaS Product and Dexys.
Often I merely use them as a prelude to sleep, so that the most inspiring of music not only illustrates my dreams through the day, but inspires new dreams by night. Fall asleep with ‘Forever Now’ and that’s no insult and phuck a phur!
But it’s this question of music’s phunction that is important, which is why the Psychos are more than just a shower to be ripped apart. They know how to pursue a good idea and build on it, so that a sense of undulating progression rather than swashbuckling adventure is the essence of their drama.
Love My Way
Within their deceptively languid flow of music and words, there lurks an effortless reservoir of graceful determination —and humour — which plucks the Psychkes from anonymous mediocrity and may yet herald a success story.
The single, ‘Love My Way’, is only the tip of it all. Encouraged by Todd Rungren‘s wide production, the Furs are opening up and out, flowering in an overpowering yet smoothly commercial vein — it’s all rather like Sixties underground groups having hit singles . . . Yardbirds, the Move, Small Faces, the Beatles even. It’s a good move.
As it is, ‘Forever Now’ (a title to match even ‘New Gold Dream’ in terms of ambition and optimism) has an engaging firmness that suits its poppiness.
The Psychedelic Furs | Forever Now | (CBS) 1982
‘Run And Run’, apart from leaping out as a probable next hit single, features the best opening line I’ve heard all year in “Go on get Tarzan, go on get Jane, go on get Superman, get Lois Lane” in that hoarse drawl of Butler’s that is admittedly ridiculous, but hypnotically so!
Much of the wordplay is a delight, but delivered in such an offhand, casual style that it often eludes ready appreciation. Like the music in which it is extravagantly couched, it benefits from constant acquaintance, though side one’s closing ‘Sleep Comes Down’, a sort of ‘He Said She Said’ meets ‘Hello Goodbye’ is an immediate pond of tranquillity.
Like the intentionally Psychedelic sleeve and accompanying poster, the music sometimes contrives to camouflage the heart in flowery deception, but the truth is . . .’Forever Now’ is a phlawed masterpiece despite itself. Use it. (Johnny Waller).
THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS: ‘Forever Now (CBS 85909) | WE HEAR them knocking . . . but still we aren’t quite ready to grant them admission. The door to the Top 40 has received a good old hammering lately from the Psychedelic Furs‘ splendid ‘Love My Way’. Much more of a battering, in the shape of just a little more radio play, and it would have given way.
The new four-piece Furs can take solace in a strong third album, however. ‘Forever Now’ isn’t full of love, not by any means. When Richard Butler‘s lyrics are accessible, they often smell of bitterness and concern, as on ‘President Gas’, picking holes in politics that are there for anyone to pick.
Todd Rundgren‘s production is less intrusive than expected, but he shares the Furs’ love of Beatles music and there are several signs of it, especially in the strings. Those on ‘President Gas’ sound like ELO’s ‘10538 Overture’ and, by progression, like ‘I Am The Walrus’, and the cello “staircase” rising at the end of ‘Sleep Comes Down’ is, Butler admits himself, a lift from ‘A Day In The Life’.
No Easy Street
‘No Easy Street’ features the same verse, slower, as ‘Love My Way’ and it’s an effective ploy familiar enough to make you feel interested but never comfortable.
Best after the single, though, is the urgent, worried ‘Danger’, with some excellently intense and hoarse horns and something very close to a funky feel.
It’s still heavy pop, but there is melody to string you along, too. An album that beckons, and yet keeps its distance — and is the more beguiling for it.
Cruising past three and a half and nudging ++++ (Record Mirror, 28/08/82)
The Psychedelic Furs | Forever Now | (CBS) 1982
PSYCHEDELIC FURS: Forever Now (CBS) | Maybe it’s complacency or just a lack of new ideas, but there has been little progression from their last album which, despite its patchiness, promised better things to come.
They’ve abandoned the more vital, raw-edged aspect of their music and still fall into their old habit of copying Bowie’s more recent work. A listen to their current single, “Love My Way”, should prove the point.
Whether or not they can forge their own identity next time, remains to be seen. But for the moment . . . (5 out of 10) (Smash Hits, October 1982)
THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS | Forever Now (CBS)
ONCE UPON a time, the Psychedelic Furs were everyone’s epitome of the vulgarity and pretence of rock music. That was years ago, and in the midst of albums of pure pain, passion and power like ‘Unknown Pleasures’, ‘Thirst’ and ‘154’, the Furs’ melodrama did seem flat and fake.
Richard Butler used to spit out ditties about his old flames with all the vitriol of Rotten attacking the establishment (small ‘e’ —this was before doing the same thing while waving an angry fist in the air became a passport to street cred) and the Furs, with their endless pouting, prancing and preening, held the unenviable title of glib glam tart upstarts of pop.
But then something changed. The brightest hopes of pop fizzled out, the remaining few dwindled into sulky obscurity, and the main music scene opened its arms ostentatiously to the Alternatives so the ranks of the charts were filled with bewildered souls stunned by commercial success who had to soften their ware considerably to stay at home in the simpering, easily digestible soft-porn world of TOTP. (How quickly The Funboy Three switched their attention from mad world rulers to telephones!)
Meanwhile The Psychedelic Brats wiped their noses and grew up. Their closed anger evaporated, leaving Butler’s sandpaper rasp rubbing uncharacteristically melodic songs the wrong (or right) way. A new simplicity disposed of all the trappings necessary to carry off their past pomp, and the Furs dropped the psychedelia and concentrated on the music.
Their venture from hollow blasting tirade of noise to more mellow present state doesn’t mean they’re now churning out bland euphonic little tunes. On the contrary, just as the Bunnymen maintain searing power in the undercurrents of even their most restrained songs (‘The Disease’, ‘Turquoise Days’), there’s a suppressed tension bubbling under Butler’s newly-tamed drawl, even in the catchy chorus of their most commercial single to date, ‘Love My Way’. (This is not to suggest ‘Forever Now’ has one tenth the worth of ‘Heaven Up Here’, but not being an outstanding record doesn’t make it a bad one.)
Nor have the Furs dropped all links with stridency — in spite of the muted voice and maturer mood, they still use the more grating edge of their instruments . . . a sign to come, no doubt, of regression towards ‘Rock’ (shudder) but then couldn’t we say the banalities (and numerous cover versions) currently filling the charts are insultingly regressive in their safety?
Of course, to a (too) serious listener the Furs may still sound strained. The secret is to take them, like all good things, in small doses or with a pinch of salt. I still wouldn’t take them home to meet my parents, but honestly, they aren’t bad for your health anymore. (NME, 25/09/82)
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