Talk Talk Talk

Certain Songs #1667: The Psychedelic Furs – “So Run Down”

October 27, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Talk Talk Talk
Year: 1981

. . .

It’s always been hard for me to pick my favorite song from Talk Talk Talk. Sometimes it’s the crazy horn-driven “Dumb Waiters,” other times the gorgeous sincerity of “She Is Mine,” or maybe the glorious fucksong roar of “Into You Like A Train.”

But really, it’s the drum-driven fuckery of “So Run Down,” a song that is at once completely intricate that every part fits perfectly and at the same time that it sounds like it’s continually falling apart. It’s like a self-contained nuclear explosion caught in an unbreakable beaker.

Certain Songs #1666: The Psychedelic Furs – “Into You Like a Train”

October 26, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Talk Talk Talk
Year: 1981

As different as the U.S. and U.K. versions of Talk Talk Talk were, they fully agreed on one point: side two needed to start off with “Into You Like a Train,” the incredibly unsubtle fuck song that featured a typical pummeling Vince Ely drumbeat and a near-perfect mix of roaring guitars, soaring sax and pouring keyboards.

Back in the fall of 1981, I was a learning how to be a DJ at the pre-on-air KFSR — broadcasting down the hall to the KFSR office!! (and maybe the dorms, though I never believed that) — one of my most vivid memories of that time is putting on “Into You Like a Train,” and just fucking turning the studio monitor up as high as it would go, trying to get taken away by the overwhelming momentum of it all.

Certain Songs #1665: The Psychedelic Furs – “She Is Mine”

October 25, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Talk Talk Talk
Year: 1981

. . .

One of the reasons that I loved — fuck, love — Talk Talk Talk so much is all of the various moods on the record. For all of his ability to sneer at all of the stupid people he writes about, Richard Butler was also capable of writing unabashed love songs, the most unabashed being the lovely “She is Mine,” which closed out side one of the U.S. version (and the whole album in the U.K.) of Talk Talk Talk in fine style.

Certain Songs #1664: The Psychedelic Furs – “Dumb Waiters”

October 24, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Talk Talk Talk
Year: 1981

. . .

I’d love to know what the reaction in the room when Duncan Kilburn first showed the rest of the P-Furs the crazy, dissonant, spiraling saxophone riff that anchors “Dumb Waiters.”

I’d like to think that the rest of the band broke out in laughter. Not because it was funny, because it was so weird and amazing and perfect, that joyous laughter truly was the only possible response to it. Like, how in the fuck are we going to base a song around this?

As it turned out, the answer was “very carefully.”

Certain Songs #1662: The Psychedelic Furs – “Pretty In Pink”

October 22, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Talk Talk Talk
Year: 1981

. . .

Welcome to one of my all-time favorite albums, a record that has continually been in my life since 1981, and has never not given me a shit-ton of pleasure every single time I’ve heard it.

And I’ve heard it a lot.

With Steve Lillywhite at the helm, Talk Talk Talk perfectly blended all of the disparate elements of the P-Furs into a grand, glorious whole, song after song tumbling across my turntable, each and every one giving up some new and unexpected musical and melodic pleasure, on top of which Richard Butler spewed a whole novel’s worth of great words, sketching out characters and situations and stories — some of which might even involve himself — in the space of a few verses.