Friday Beats - The Psychedelic Furs, "Talk Talk Talk"

she turns her self round and
she smiles and she says
this is it
that's the end of the joke

I'd like to be able to say that I was impressed with this album the first time I heard it. That I realized how great it was. That I understood songs like Mr. Jones and Pretty in Pink. But the truth was I thought it was a step down from the first album of theirs I'd heard, Mirror Moves.

movie stars and ads
and radio define romance

Mirror Moves was slicker and had started incorporating the more technological effects that would ruin their next album (Midnight to Midnight). Coming from a kid who was a big fan of Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode and the clean emo of the Smiths, well, I didn't know what to make of the ragged rough sounds found on Talk Talk Talk. I think I recognized Pretty in Pink as a brilliant song, but beyond that my brain just didn't work properly.

if you believe that anyone
like me within a song
is outside it all
then you are all so wrong

Plus of course I associated rock with metal and metal with getting beaten up. Unfair I know. I could tell that the Furs weren't that kind of rock band, but still couldn't quite get into them. I listened to them from time to time, but mostly Mirror Moves (which is still quite a good album) It wasn't until college when I had matured enough and become pretentious that I started really understanding the Furs. Not that you have to be pretentious to appreciate a song like "Into you like a Train" or "I Wanna Sleep With You."

the sound of people getting drunk
a ceiling and a sky
a bank that's full of promises
a telephone that lies

I guess I'd matured a bit. I guess I'd figured a few things out. But my second dance with the furs I figured them out; got them in a way I hadn't before. When Columbia put out a reissue of this album (along with the eponymously named debut and Forever Now), I snapped it up. It includes She is Mine, a song I had always adored, and alternate versions of Mr. Jones, So Run Down and All of this and Nothing (later the name of one of their best ofs.

met this girl and called her ma
i called her everything
i called her fab and mrs. fish
i didn't get her name

Anyway the Psychedelic Furs came. And they are still worth giving a listen too.