October 2–9, 1997

critic pick|rock/pop

rock/pop

Love Spit Love

Back when there was an Emerald City and a Lee Paris, The Psychedelic Furs put out a debut album impossible to ignore. From its Day-Glo album sleeve to a photo that posed the band as a Velvet Underground-meets-Noel Coward, you felt the brisk chill of pretension; art-rock gone mad.

Then you heard the goods—haunting saxophone, densely layered guitars, thundering drums and bass—and they were amazing. They were spindly and muscular at the same time, frighteningly Baroque and just subterranean enough to make you wanna smoke a whole pack of Gauloises.

Then there's Richard Butler. With a mannered, raspy voice that had sucked down its share of Pernods and unfiltered cigarettes, Butler sounded like the bastard son of David Bowie and Marlene Dietrich. His alluring lyrics and sinister vocals never failed to send a chill through one's center.

Their next discs took purple-to-black intensity and made it rain with strings and horns to Technicolor effect. Throughout the colorful tornado, Butler's scratchy voice acts as calm and storm; as soothing as it is seedy. Though hits like "The Ghost In You," "Heartbreak Beat" and "Here Come Cowboys" made them anthemic heroes, you never got the feeling that waxy shine would stay for long. (You can find all the above plus eight unreleased songs and B-sides on Should God Forget: A Retrospective due out from Columbia/Legacy on Oct. 21.)

This brings us to the leaner, lonelier, but still baroque Love Spit Love. Like taking the creaky old Louvre and installing it in the MOMA, Butler has compacted his maelstrom neatly in Love Spit Love without losing the heartbreak or the beat. With raga ranginess and celloed aplomb, Butler and brother Tim (the bassist from the Furs) have taken their majestic wall of sound and blunted it to swirling, psychedelic effect on their sophomore effort, Trysome Eatone (Maverick). Imagine a densely pounding Kula Shaker with an Irish lilt and Seeds-like nastiness and you're there. But remaining at storm's center is Butler, the haunting gentleman whose abstract imagery conjures up the decrepit old-world cinema just by opening his mouth.

Love Spit Love, Fri., Oct. 3, T.L.A., 334 South St., 922-1011.

-a.d. amorosi