it gets significantly better than this



but i've flipped my opinion on the Furs

they had Style

people have various complaints about what got left out of Rip It Up, the notion that a book is necessarily Finite doesn't seem to occur to them, but out of the "by your own definition, this fits" objections, the ones that do strike me as having some pertinence are:

Why not The Clash? (yeah yeah they made lots of postpunk-y/even PiL-y moves - dub,funk, rap, world-y -- but too rock'n'roll aren't they?)

Why not The Police? (yeah yeah, innovative, the punky reggae thing, live did all this improvisational stuff stretching out the songs, guitar-as-texture, drums-as-lead, Very Serious Political Lyrics, also anticipating New Pop with their characterful videos etc etc -- but they are part of the phenomenon, which is worth coming back to, of Crypto-Prog New Wave/Ex-Prog Infiltrating New Wave)

Why not The Stranglers? (I totally agree actually... they even went New Poppy/synthpoppy with "European Female", an easy transition what with them already being synthrock).

And then the Psychedelic Furs, who were Peel faves circa the singles that led up to the first album, and did also make the transition, rather effectively one concedes in retrospect, to New Pop with this Visage/Japan remodelling of sound and image. although it didn't succeed as New Pop in the U.K. (none of those songs were hits, i don't think) but only in the USA as part of the Second British Invasion / MTV wave.



going back to the Peel-fave era and the first album (which I bought at the time), this was my favourite of those three early Furs singles. and it is entrancing as an exercise in vapid yet compelling atmosphere/mystique (very much a la Bolan/Banshees actually)