Album Review: Psychedelic Furs – Made Of Rain  (CookingVinyl)

Punk-era Art Rockers Psychedelic Furs let loose a stunning album of new material, 29 years after the last one. The brothers Richard Butler and Tim Butler are Voice and bass guitar, Poet and the Rhythm. The album is Made of Rain.

With a nod to the Velvet Underground, the band trades in drones, dissonance and musical mantras with a Songster poet. Dylan is an admirer. I nominate Morrissey too.

The Boy Who invented Rock’n’Roll is at the top of the playlist and it’s theatrical British Indie-Rock. Lush keyboards, jazzy saxophone riffs, some backwards tape effects. Singer still has a scathing cynical John Lydon delivery in his arsenal.

Suicidal drunken dance/ The sense that things will fall apart. Dada and the Situationists. 1920 and 1968 and 2020.

 You’ll Be Mine is anthemic with guitars and possibly keyboards sounding like the skirl of bag-pipes. The guitarist Rich Good plays a drone halfway through. Singer has some Irish grit in his delivery invoking Shane McGowan. Horns, woodwind and musical kaleidoscopes at the end Pepper-style. When the new black is white/ When the new low’s a high/ In the ticking of the time/ You’ll be mine.

This Will Never Be Like Love has a Smiths sound all over it. Slow, stately and sombre, and is a showcase for the vocal prowess of the Singer. Heartfelt emotion and clear enunciation like Sinatra or more possibly Jim Morrison. The drunken poet more acceptable than the vegan nasty. There is a nice melancholy clarinet in the latter half, guitar shards also spread through.

Wrong Train opens with a sustained guitar feedback drone. Expressive singing rises and stretches out. Keyboards overlays a nice blanket. A song about personal relationship traumas and truths. In the end there’s nothing left to say.

Come All Ye Faithful is garish, surreal theatre. A band is playing mutant Klezmer. Dislocated horns, gypsy jazz. The Burroughs bar and the Mugwumps sitting in the dark.                                    Come on you playboys/ Sinners/ Druggy mothers/ Holy rollers/ Shine a light on me. Don’t.

No One opens with some Joy Division echoed dissonance and an ominous mood and then welds in some Indie-Rock New Order dance rhythms. The singer expresses dark sentiments and is ambivalent about suicide and haters. Who’s gonna cut you down? / And get your feet back on the ground/ No one at all.

Tiny Hands has baroque keyboards to open. Rises up and rides on pretty melodies. The Singer has an affectless Sinatra delivery. It’s a complex Pop song which could have come from the head of Brian Wilson in his Smile era madness.

Hide the Medicine is a raw, confrontational song. Pretty orchestral instrumental wrapping. A sympathetic English Soul vocal. Hide the medicine from the kids/ Hide the bruises and the punches/ Don’t understand what you’re talking about/ We’re out on the ledge/ And on the way down.

Stars begins with keyboards sparkling and flashing lights. Some sort of peace at the close of this show. Peace comes in waves and washes of sonic maelstrom. The bagpipes pipe up.

These are the days/ That we will all remember.

Superb return. Raw, emotional, open and necessary.

Rev Orange Peel