Psychedelic Furs, O2 Academy, Glasgow, Garry Scott, four stars
It's always tricky, isn't? Go to see a band that helped soundtrack your youth and risk Cure-at-Bellahouston-Park-style-disappointment. A feeling that you've come to the party 30 years too late. So how would the Psychedelic Furs fare?
They were never the biggest, never the most culty band – their ever-changing sound confused some fans – and to many they were no more than Pretty In Pink.
But to me, at least, I hear shades of their first raw album from 1980 in today's angular, post-punk art bands such Bodega and Drahla.
Taking the stage at a busy 02 Academy, the Furs look like a band should look. Swathed in black, crushed red velvet and shades. A special mention to bassist Tim Butler who looks like a Scooby Doo baddie with his curtain of hair and dark glasses obscuring his eyes.
They open with Dumb Waiters, followed by Mr Jones from their second album Talk, Talk, Talk. The songs may be, shockingly, nearly 40 years old but the band perform them with an intensity that suggests they have only just written them, Richard Butler bouncing around the stage as if sheer elegant energy can stop the ageing process.
From there, the favourites roll out – Sister Europe, Heaven, Love My Way to an enthusiastic reaction. There’s room for There’s A World Outside and All That Money Wants, too, which get a slightly cooler reaction.
There’s a surprise, though, a new song: The Boy That Invented Rock n Roll. Driven forward by the drums and bass, like all the best Furs’ songs, it has an insistent drive and lyrically covers Butler’s favourite territory – “the godless dark, the end of days”. It wouldn’t sound out of place on their first album.
They get Pretty in Pink out of the way and move onto President Gas, written decades before the populism that has taken hold in England and America, but sounding spookily prescient – “it comes in from the left sometimes, it comes in from the right”.
Then it's Heartbreak Beat from Midnight to Midnight – a big shiny album that split opinion then but the tune itself has aged well. They encore with a blistering India – a reminder of just how vital the Psychedelic Furs were – and with a promised new album could be again.
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