Aside from the awesome 'India' with it's swirling, elegaic guitar intro, most of the Psychedelic Furs' best moments are here; from the beautiful, bitter melancholy of 'Imitation Of Christ' taken from their remarkably assured debut, John Ashton's mournful guitar shimmering as though glimpsed through a rain-soaked window to the driving, triumphantly brass-laden US chart stormer 'Heartbreak Beat', it's hard to imagine a better primer for their '80s work. Nothing from 1989's low-key grower 'Book Of Days' or the frankly disappointing 1991 release 'World Outside' is here; the original collection was released in 1988 and centres on what most fans would identify as the Furs' most creative period. The album isn't sequenced chronologically, but the tracks are cleverly ordered, kicking off with the mechanistic anti-Reagan sneer of 'President Gas' and leaving the work which followed 1984's under-rated 'Mirror Moves' (the album which broke them big in America) until the latter half of the playlist.
It must be said, despite the exalted reputation of their first three albums the later material stands up almost as well as anything else here. 'The Ghost In You' starts unpromisingly with a sickly-sweet synth lead but blossoms into a poignant and redemptive love song featuring one of Richard Butler's finest and most emotionally direct lyrics. 'Highwire Days' uses a reverberating drum kick and distorted, cavernous vocal wailing to build a palpable air of tension as Butler incisively documents the thrills and paranoias of fleeting fame. What this later material lacks, however is the gorgeous murk and shimmer of John Ashton's early guitar work, augmented subtly by pseudo-Oriental flourishes of percussion. The sound is elegant and yet evocatively vague, exotic yet urban. And nothing in their entire output can quite match that perfect Furs moment, 'Pretty In Pink', it's raucous but oddly memorious sound capped with one of the finest lyrics in all of rock, hands down. The appallingly twee remake which soundtracked John Hughes' movie of the same name (signalling a complete misunderstanding of the melancholic, even disturbing undertow of Butler's words) is mercifully absent from this playlist.
All in all, an excellent and concise introduction to this criminally ignored band, and a less daunting starting point than the two CD best of that's more widely available now. If you're unfamiliar with the Psychedelic Furs work, snap this one up while you're still able to. Regardless of their influence, you can't get the full picture of post-punk British music without taking in their work. As musicians and poets, they stand head and shoulders above many more feted acts of the early eighties, and they have a sound-world all of their own.
