Customer Reviews

The Psychedelic Furs - Greatest Hits

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This beautifully packaged Greatest Hits single cd set is a 17 song career overview picked by none other than Tim Butler of the Furs. Contains all the Johnny Rotten com '80's Butler sneers and the classics one expects when using "Greatest Hits" as a title. Plus, a previously unreleased live version of "Only You and I" and interview w/Richard Butler & John Ashton. For the casual fan, newcomer or one in need of a quick fix - this is perfect. For the seasoned veteran, I'd suggest the in-depth 2 disc set, "Should God Forget. A Retrospective." "Greatest Hits is basically a shorter version of "Should God Forget (note same covers/different colors).

It's terrible when they take good music and "remaster" it, or remake it to sound like current commercial music. Electric noise, excessive bass/treble are emphasized here. Vocals and clarity are de-emphasized. It's a good collection of songs, but the remastering ruins it. Instead get the collection "All of This and Nothing".

For a single CD compilation "Greatest Hits," this does little to freshen the band's previous greatest hits package, 1988s "All of this and Nothing." The classic Furs cuts are here, but for a survey of anything after 1988, this offers a poor compilation of what's best from "Book of Days" and "World Outside." Those curious about the Furs would do better to invest in the 1997 Sony/Legacy "Should God Forget." As close to a box set as your going to get,this 2-CD retrospective has all the essential Furs hits of "Greatest Hits," some great previously unreleased gems, and the decent cuts from the Furs most recent studio work. Rumor has it the band is in the studio recording a new album (6/01), and their recent US tour (2001) has Richard Butler in fine vocal form and appearing to enjoy being on the road again. Bandmates John Ashton and Tim Butler are a tight ensemble. Whatever CD you chose, the Furs have been an overlooked and underappreciated band of the 80s. Long live the Furs!

It's a given that 2-disc compilations cost more than a single disc package, but The Psychedelic Furs are deserving of a double disc "hits" collection (***Note*** "Should God Forget" is a double set, but includes many live tracks, alternate takes, and lesser known tracks). If the executives at the helm felt this was too cost prohibitive, an alternative strategy the record label could have employed would be to release a single disc compliation for the casual listener and a more comprehensive double set for the more serious listener. This has been done before: see David Bowie's "Best of Bowie" for example.

Having said this, "Greatest Hits" does a decent job of covering some of the best from roughly 12 years of The Furs' offerings. Of course the obligatory hits like "Pretty in Pink" and "The Ghost in You" are included, but I was disappointed to see that nothing from "Book of Days" was found herein. Instead, the final Furs album, "World Outside," is given precendence. From "World Outside" are included "Sometimes," "Until She Comes," and "There's a World Outside." These are all great choices, but it sure would have been great to at least have "Should God Forget" from "Book of Days." This seems like a no brainer to me.

The previous hits package, 1989's "All of This and Nothing," featured the stellar "No Easy Street" as well as "Imitation of Christ","Highwire Days," "She is Mine," and the title track. All of these are sorely lacking from "Greatest Hits." "Greatest Hits," however, provides such gems as "Mr. Jones," "Here Come Cowboys," and "Heartbeat" that were dubiously left off of the former.

To sum it all up, "Greatest Hits" is a pretty decent collection of the band's finer moments, but it is by no means wholly representative. I'd recommend, of course, buying their entire collection, but I realize this takes time and money. I would suggest buying "All of This and Nothing" to complement "Greatest Hits," especially since it usually can be had for less than $5. There's no doubt that many of the tracks will be redundant, but each collection features several that the other lacks.

I like the band but at this point they have more greatest hit packages and retrospectives than actual CD's... At this point it makes more sense to buy the original CD's.

This is starting to get silly.

The Psychedelic Furs came out of the echoey soundscapes of post-punk and later ascendended into new wave stratosphere. This collection traces their career's steps: from their Bowie/Roxy Music begginings to the consolidation of their idiosyncratic sound to their hollow pop days and to their "redemption."

The first few tracks are exemplary of their earliest output. "Sister Europe" could've been on any late-70s Bowie album. Heck, Richard Butler even sounds just like Bowie on this song! The track's production, courtesy of Steve Liliwhite, is of the gloomiest and most reverb-rich sort. Again, think Berlin-era Bowie. "Mr. Jones [Single Version]" is a brash number, punkish-almost, and grounded on an immensely catchy riff. "Dumb Waiters" is the kind of track that reveals a Roxy Music fixation. It uses a sax riff that's at the forefront of the mix, and its atonal repetition keenly invokes a spaced-out atmosphere. "Pretty in Pink," sadly, isn't the poppy film version. This one is a bit more jagged, but it's not the best known one. Alas, the film's fans will be more than disappointed at the compiler's choice.

Tracks 5-10 see the development of a more "80s" sound. The Furs manage to create some truly outstanding bits of music during this phase of their career. Again, the atmosphere that these songs create are amazing. Butler's vocals also act as their own instrument. Pop genius in the context of swirling soundscapes? Oh yeah. This is their zenith, and every selection from this era is a winner.

11-12 come from the much-maligned "Midnight to Midnight" album. The production on that album, rather than being multilayered or atmospheric, feels hollow and fleeting. The liner notes show how the band disdains that effort as overproduced and quickly made. And yet, a song like "Heartbreak Beat" has the sort of catchy longevity that belies its origins. If there's a chorus that'll be stuck in your head for days, it will be this one.

Track 13 comes from a late-80s compilation, and its a delightfully zonky track that revels in its own jangly ephemeral state. It shows the band backing away from the sound on "Midnight to Midnight."

We don't get anything from 1989's "Book of Days" album. Too uncommercial, perhaps?

Next, we get three tracks from the band's 1991 album. The songs work well, but they arent't as memorable as their early 80s classics. At the same time, however, they have more lasting value than lots of the tunes on the slick "Midnight to Midnight." The production values are not as well-honed as that seen on prior efforts, but that's okay. To me, these tracks are nice coalescing of stages.

Lastly, we get a live track that, ironically, ends with the drums from "Sister Europe" (this set's first track).

So, why 4 stars rather than 5? First, I think we get too many tracks from their 1991 album and not enough from their debut. Where's "We Love You" or "India"? You can't short-change the band's post-punk start. Next, the whole "Pretty in Pink" thing still sort of miffs me. Lastly, the live track didn't really do it for me. The compilers could've nixed that and put in a better album track. The CD is about an hour and 16 minutes long. Had they taken out the live track, we might've had room for two decent songs (maybe something from "Book of Days"?).

All in all, the music here is fantastic. It clearly displays the evolution of a band, and the results of the band's changes are riveting fun. Despite a few structural flaws, this set does it job quite admirably. Any fan of 80s music should own this. Ditto for post-punk fans. Bowie or Roxy Music afficcionados should also consider this gem. Heck, everyone should invest in this hearty gem!

The song sequences of my old 80s cassettes are too ingrained in my brain--I feel cheated when the song I'm expecting next doesn't come on. So, I find myself just replacing the cassettes with whole album CDs.

That's not to say that I don't have an appreciation for some 80s compilations. This Greatest Hits release of The Psych Furs features a terrific balance of their rough-edged early songs with the slicker, more mainstream fare from their later years. And because I love them all, I'd say that there is not a single miss on this CD, even the original "Pretty In Pink" (both versions are excellent), except...I would prefer that "Only You and I" was not a live version.

It seems that a lot of Best Of CDs like to include one live song at the end, and I wish they wouldn't do it--I'm from the camp that says if I want to hear live songs, I will either close my eyes and remember a show I went to instead of going to the library, or I will pay an arm and a leg for fifth-row tickets to a reunion concert.

During the earlier days of the new wave 80's, while most bands were making dance music and dressing outlandishly (think Duran Duran or A Flock of Seagulls), Richard Butler and his mates in the Psychedelic Furs took on a whole opposite tack. The first Psychedelic Furs album was a sublime mix of Velvet Underground drone and David Bowie's Low Berlin phase. Grinding with the commitment of fresh amateurism, "Sister Europe" caught the imagination of listeners in the UK and a cult following in the US.

The Furs got better fast and cut a classic on the second try with Talk Talk Talk. Containing what is likely their best known song, "Pretty In Pink," it found the Furs upping the tempo and Butler's voice starting to come into its own. The version of PiP here is the original album version, much darker than the re-recording made for the John Hughes film, and "Mr. Jones" is a cleaner single mix. The next album has Todd Rundgren stepping up to the production booth, and he streamlined the band to the point where "Love My Way's" xylophone riff teased the top 40. Forever Now also saw the band start toying with politics on the Reagan bashing "President Gas."

That tightness followed with Mirror Moves and more flirtations with top 40 radio. "Heartbeat" became a dance club hit and "The Ghost In You" really mirrored the Bowie fixation. The Reagan/Thatcher Axis took another poke with "Here Come Cowboys." The wait for success, however, came when Pretty in Pink hit theaters and Midnight to Midnight dropped "Heartbreak Beat," The Furs' highest charting single. But the band hated the album and tried for a more "return to the roots" on Book of Days...which was so under-rated that no songs from it appear here.

The band hit transition for All That Money Wants, a new track on a best of. The Furs' lineup changed, they moved to New York and they released a great comeback, World Outside, but to little notice. Listen to the songs "There's a World Outside" and "Until She Comes," and you'll realize the album was better than its reception. While The Psychedelic Furs progressed from amateur Bowie acolytes to an influential force all their own, it is this Best Of that captures their devolvement on a single CD.

All the highlights of the Furs brilliant career are here. A good starting point for those new to the band before moving on to their other great studio albums such as Talk, Talk, Talk and Forever Now.

Any comparison between the Psychedelic Furs and the Sex Pistols is mind-blowingly stupid. They were from different planets.

Believe it or not, when I hung out at Washington DC clubs like The Wax Museum during the 1980s, Furs music seemed rather romantic. The Pistols were dead by then--literally and figuratively--and you could never by any stretch of the imagination call anything they touched romance-driven. I loved the Pistols, but they were a social movement, the soundtrack to a riot, not dance music or something you'd put on the car stereo as you polished your make out moves.

But "Pretty In Pink" was fun and young and fast and danceable; Rolling Stone may have insisted that it was an attack on the highschool mainstream but we all understood it to be a whacked bit of praise for the pretty girl who had more behind her blush than a wish to be a varsity cheerleader; if you were 18 and in those clubs you knew there were a lot of Pretty in Pink types--male and female--hiding on those dance floors. I may be waxing too poetic, but it was amazing to see how many Perfect n' Pure people ended up moving their hips to this kind of thing.

"Love My Way" and "Heaven" and "The Ghost In You" created an atmosphere that I've never found duplicated, where all of these young suburban kids were able to transpose themselves into some kind of hip ultra-modern netherworld, and the fact that the Furs and a lot of other bands like them sang in Ziggy Stardust drones, played a lot of dry electric synths, and made even human drummers sound pre-programmed had a lot to do with that other-world feel. Too much Vodka and who knows what all else didn't dampen the feeling either. Here in DC we had the premier alt radio station, the now long-defunct WHFS 102.3, driving the scene, and everything you ever saw in Valley Girl and Pretty In Pink---and Rock n Roll High School and Square Pegs and Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Geeks & Freaks and, later, High Fidelity and Almost Famous---was all true. We listened to "Until She Comes" and things like "New Toy" and Cyndi Lauper's awesome cover of "Money Changes Everything" and LONDON CALLING and even Boy George and Marshall Crenshaw and Devo worked their way into the mix. It all seems like another planet now.

The break down came when you got past the first tier of tunes for bands like the Furs, when you realized that the annoying squawking on "Heartbeat" sounded way too much like a Duran Duran record, when Madonna and all of the other mall mavens took over the charts, when the Vodka wore off and all of the wonderful dreamscapes of Saturday night just hit a brick wall on Sunday morning. I got tired of trying to make the transformation from my oh-so-cool 2 a.m. Wax Museum persona to somebody who could get out of bed and make a cup of coffee before lunch.

So the Furs and a thousand other bands like them are now just a reflective bit of their former selves, and my generations former lives. Both have a glittery patina, but the shine is thin; shallow and hollow and, in too many ways, in the end, meaningless.