The Psychedelic Furs played Sound Waves at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on Saturday, March 19th, 2022, a rescheduled show from 2021, bringing their new album, Made of Rain, to fans. Though the album was written and recorded before the pandemic, its cover art, which depicts a statue wilting under purple paint splatter resonates strongly with the early days of that experience when authoritarian and racist statuary was being tagged and torn down the world over. Their tour for Made of Rain, now underway again, is wide-ranging. Always well-known for their live shows, which for many years consisted of their deep catalog, the Furs brought a fairly radical level of energy to Saturday’s performance, with an almost palpable joy to being onstage once more. That intensity was pretty equally matched by the audience, who at times looked like they might climb on stage if not for watchful security.
Opening for the Furs was fellow Brit Royston Langdon who recently released his first solo EP, Chains, and performed original songs and some soulful covers solo marshalling some impressive vocals.
The Psychedelic Furs settled on a pretty much perfect strategy of playing a very dispersed set of their most beloved songs interwoven with interesting new tracks from Made of Rain, making this far from a nostalgia act. Audience members were possibly surprised when both “Pretty in Pink” and “Love My Way” were played as the structural center of the performance rather than keeping fans waiting for the end for some of their best-known songs. That’s because they intended to play several powerful songs before “Heartbreak Beat” and an encore that included “Sister Europe” and felt particularly impassioned, almost certainly a commentary on Russia’s war on the Ukraine.
From their new album, they delivered “Wrong Train”, “The Boy Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll”, “No One”, “Don’t Believe”, “Ash Wednesday”, and “This’ll Never Be Like Love”, which was a very strong showcase for their musical and lyrical stance these days. While Made of Rain is demonstrably a little more subtle and darker than previous albums (and their music videos reinforce that), sonically they layered very smoothly into the setlist with perennial favorites. That suggests a remarkable achievement with their new music building creatively off their past work, an achievement best illustrated by hearing such a time capsule of music presented as a single body of work.
Here’s our photogallery from the concert:
Photogallery credit to Russell Shannon
