Customer Reviews

Talk Talk Talk

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Time seems to have vindicated the Psychedelic Furs. I have been listening to them a lot lately; in fact, of the bands I have been listening to of late they spend the most time on my CD changer and in the car. I always loved the band but I am even more impressed with them now, some 15-20 years after their heyday. Even though the Furs did achieve a certain amount of commercial success during their time they still seem to be an underrated band, not fully appreciated for their sound, which on this album is fully realized. Like the best bands, they were also ahead of their time. The Furs' sound is both at once nostalgic and current and most of their songs are holding up well, proving to be enduring. On this album all the songs hold up exceedingly well - there's not a bad one in the bunch.

This is the best album of the early Furs' lineup, when they had the saxophones up front as an integral part of their sound. Even today no band sounds like the Furs (check out the beginning of "All of This and Nothing" which starts off with a 12-string guitar and saxophone, and why this song wasn't included on the 2-disc retrospective "Should God Forget" I'll never know). But the best adjective to describe this album is relentless. Is this punk or is this pop played with punk intensity? Probably the latter though by the time you're listening to "Into You Like a Train" it hardly matters. Where their first album was dark and moody, "Talk Talk Talk" bristles with intense energy. But throughout this album they display a pop sensibility that most punk bands didn't have and hinted at things to come on later albums. Check out "Pretty In Pink" for example and the inexplicably pretty "She Is Mine" that closed the original album. "Talk Talk Talk" is beautiful chaos - to borrow the title of their latest effort. It is great rock and roll that is always on the edge of being out-of-control but maintains its tightness and energy without ever crossing over into sloppiness. It is chaotic and frenetic music in the best sense of the word; it is music that makes you feel alive because it has life to it. For all their success, the more commercial U2 never recorded anything near as vital and intense as "Talk Talk Talk", even "War".

At the center of all of this is Richard Butler's distinctive voice almost clawing its way out of the dense mix and swirl of sound to be heard. It's great heady stuff and if you're a fan of the 80's this album is an essential one to have. Along with the Pretenders' first two albums, the Furs defined the sound of post-punk in the early 80's before they became progressively slicker on their next three albums. Their final two albums - "Book of Days", where they returned to a basic stripped-down sound reminiscent of their earlier efforts, and "World Outside" are also excellent and their best albums after this one. The Furs should rightfully be regarded as one of the 80's most important and influential bands. "Talk Talk Talk" was THE sound of 1981 and it still roars and sounds every bit as good 22 years later.

This music blew me away when it came out. At eighteen, I really thought I'd heard it all. I'd gone through my rebellious phase and snuck out to see Rocky Horror a gazillion times, I'd become a loyal listener to both of the cool weekly punk shows: Mike Halloran's "Radios in Motion" on the Wayne State U. public radio station and "W-4 Play" on Detroit's WWWW (which, unbeknownst to the DJ's, was soon to be sold and turned overnight into a country station). Mike's show was especially great for catching the new and imported acts. But the P-furs didn't sound like anything else, despite the Steve Lilywhite production. Metallic, yet melodic. That gravelly voice of Richard Butler set against a velvet saxaphone. Can such pretty pop come out of such hard-edged punk?

This particular disc, thanks to its role in introucing us to the "Pretty in Pink" single, was accompanied by a pair of pink panties, initially. Or, it may be that Mike and other DJ's just got one as a promotional gag (artists had to get creative after payola was outlawed, after all, although what Mike Halloran would do with a pair of pink panties, I will not speculate here).

I especially love the version of Pretty in Pink on this disk. It is quite different than that on the soundtrack of the film, Pretty in Pink, which was made some seven or eight years after this recording and has nothing to do with it. The song has a different meaning entirely, empathizing with a girl--perhaps a prostitute-- who keeps hoping the men whom she lets use her will turn out to love her, when obviously that's not likely. And it was re-recorded for the film in a much more "refined" way, even as a "solo" for Richard Butler. A lot of the edge is taken out, some of the saxaphone solo isn't there, and it loses some of the darkness of the earlier version.

"It Goes On," "Dumb Waiters", and "Into You Like a Train" have riffs boppy enough to dance to. "I Just Want To Sleep With You" pretty much says it just like it is. My very favorite, bringing together a wistful melody with a dreamlike lyric is "All of This and Nothing". Girl leaves boy, and girl leaves behind stuff, but nothing makes sense to him.

P. Furs told the world in name, style and lyric that rebellion and fashion could co-habitate freely. Yes, we knew that already from the Stones and David Bowie, but it doesn't hurt to be reminded by the pros.

After pantherboy's fine review, there's not a whole lot left to say. Only that this release stands as the high-water mark from a band that is arguably the best (to my ears, anyway) of the New Wave.

Insightful songwriting, edgy playing, Butler's acerbic singing, Steve Lillywhite's in-your-face production which, thankfully, left The Furs' rough edges intact--what more can one ask?

Among what I consider life's many treats was to have been in my early-twenties when the New Wave was in full flower. And this unforgettable album, 'painted' like an abstract painting-- angular, with bold colors and shapes--is one of its finest moments.

To anyone young-enough not to remember the Furs, I congratulate you on your curiosity and urge you to purchase this album today (if not sooner).

P.S. Now that we have the remastered "Should God Forget", where are the remastered editions of the single releases?

This is a great album. I saw the furs back in '84 and they were an incredible live band and put out some of the most unique music of the 80's. Richard Butler, with an unapologetic cockney accented singing style, combined with his tobacco soaked voice and backed by an awesome band with a... horn section!

The problem I have with this (and the other furs reissues) is the sound quality. These have been remastered by Sony, and unlike their other reissues (The Clash, Cheap Trick), the sound quality is not all that much better than the old CD's and Epic albums I have from the 80's. I have a couple of their LP's on import British pressings, but I'd hoped that these CD's would sound better. I guess that the master tapes just weren't recorded all that well and they did the best that they could with what they had to work with. All in all, five stars for the music, three stars for sound quality.

Talk Talk Talk is the Furs at the height of their game, exhilarating and dense, with one riveting piece of candy-coated trash after another floating out of the speakers. In my own punk heydey, this was killer choice stuff -- even though it's not really punk at all -- and came at a time when doctrinal rigidity to crud like hardcore or straightcore or whatever didn't mean diddly. Talk Talk Talk came out at a time before radio had completed its terrible march to niche segregation, and exciting music was coming at kids from all corners. Punk and new wave stuff led the blast. The Furs were among the best and most disposable at the same time. One quibble with the Amazon reviewer: He takes a crack at what followed this from the Furs, but Forever Now is a very good record that, with the devastating Brechtian nightmare of "Easy Street" and sweet metalic joy of "Yes I Do" and when they went all mushy on us ("Heaven," "The Ghost In You") it was still irresistable. Last great one for me: "Until She Comes."

"Mrs. London and her son are coming at me with a gun, yeah I mean it honestly..." "have another cigarette and then another cigarette..."
Butler, Ashton, Kilburn, what a gathering of masters.

The first two Furs albums arrived at a time when Steve Lillywhite, Alan Parsons, and Malcolm McLaren were dominating production on the best of the new British bands at the time. Talk Talk Talk expresses the production values established by these greats of the knobs. The Furs pretty much had something of all my favorites of the time, which of course made their first two albums constants on the turntable and in the car cassette player.
We needed the raw scratch vocals, the modulating saxaphone, the masterful guitar.
Smooth was not the key to the sound of the Furs here or on their first album. Talk Talk Talk came at us with the group power of the songs Dumb Waiters and Pretty In Pink and left on the feather duster psychedelic musings of the poet in All Of This And Nothing and She Is Mine all the while never letting up on their mission of taking their place ahead of The Bunneymen, Simple Minds, U2, Aztec Camera, Church, and Bowie. For a while they did surpass Bowie as he ran from the terrors of Diamond Dogs into the cream creased safety of his Thin White Duke phase. Thank goodness for the Furs.

The guitar work on this album is some of Ashton's best.
The Saxaphone is more than an instrument of reed, wind and metal, it is a chorus and a lead. One of my favorite musical arguments was whether the sax was played through an effects pedal or not because Duncan Kliburns movement within notes were pulsing with the vocals.
And the vocals, yes, Bowie nightmare tones, but with a rasp that showed both fear and aggression in the same verse without violent swings from low to high note.
Of course Pretty In Pink is the highlight for the masses and that is fine. The inclusion of the Furs in John Hughs' movies gave the movies more crediblity and did not hurt the Furs at all as far as I am concerned. Really now, 'isn't she pretty in pink?" As if it is sang with cigarettes and bad wine on his lips, and maybe so.
I can live with the first two Psychedelic Furs albums without ever listening to any of the others. But I cannot listen to any of their later work without having to put on Dumb Waiters or All Of This And Nothing, and then India from the first album.

For any clear appreciation of the British movement and importance in post punk music the first two Psychedelic Furs albums are necessary. Listen to them with the first two Bunneymen albums, Simple-Minds New Gold Dream, the Church-Remote Luxury, Chameleons-Script Of The Bridge, U2 Boy and Ocotober and you will get an idea of the greatness that was music in those days.
Talk Talk Talk is more than a good dance album, it is an album where every part of the band is at their peak of realization of their talents. Buy this and just feel the twisting of their passions fear and loathing to lust and emotional longing. It's all there between the tracks waiting for another convert to the ways of British music in the late 1970s into the early 1980s.
Dreamy, hazy, then wide awake and wild with energy, that is this CD.

The first poster says this cd is "the only one of value by the Furs." This is insane. Their debut, "The Psychedelic Furs," is one of the best cd's of all time. "Talk Talk Talk" is more accessible, lighter, and poppier -- none of these bad, considering how dark and atonal the debut was. If you know the Furs from "Pretty in Pink," start with "Talk Talk Talk." If you like dark, uncompromising, visionary music, get the debut.

Savvy Brit art students make good on this sophomore effort, turning in a glorious collision of naive guitar thrusts and the most inventive use of a drum kit I've heard in a rock format. Richard Butler's vocals have a brooding tenderness, as if he's sharing very personal poetry he's too shy to get excited about, and a perfect saxophone weaves its way throughout these songs, lending an almost alien smokiness. (Rock bands take note - always practice safe sax!!)

All my favorite Furs songs are here, and if I haven't grown tired of these rainy odes to bittersweet melancholy after literally hundreds of plays ("It goes On") yet, I doubt I ever will. Each successive play reveals truths in the shrouded lyrics, and individual phrases become universally adaptable in a broad range of contexts. By the time "All This and Nothing" rolls around, Butler's flat, velvety categorization of objects left in the wake of a failed relationship add the perfect nihilistic nightcap to this ambitious work.

Maybe someday a book will be written collecting various listeners' impressions of this rich and consistently fresh album. For a real thrill, listen with headphones to the clever interplay between the two bipolar guitar parts and the dissonant, mathematical drums. Steve Lillywhite's production has been accused of being too dense, but his quintessential 80's palette allows these gifted acid casualties to let their colors fly.

This is one of my all-time favorites. The Furs sound young, arrogant, bored, and angry. And catchy as hell.

This was the Furs' shining moment, when they cranked out screaming guitar commotion so dense it sounds like the tracks are falling on top of one another. Especially "Into You Like a Train", the all-time best anti-love love song. The vocals fit in perfectly, a sort of a relaxed Johnny Rotten effect that expressed perfect sardonic disdain. After this album, Todd Rundgren got ahold of them and started putting weird stuff like marimbas into the mix...but at least he got rid of the sax. The sax on this album is terrible--pointless noodling-around solos and a tone that sounds like a sick, but hesitant, goose. If only they could remix this album to wipe out the sax, it would be a 5-star product!