This is a great album featuring several of
the band's strongest songs as well as fine wordplay throughout by
Richard Butler. It's also the Furs' most American-oriented release,
produced (nicely) by Todd Rundgren and peppered with clever lyrics
saluting "President Gas" or name checking "Ma B. and her boys" (I assume
Ma Barker?).
As already noted by a few reviewers, there is a
mysterious alteration of the final song, "Yes I Do." This irritates me,
because I particularly liked that song at the end of Side 2 on my old
vinyl ... the version on this reissue is called "Yes I Do
(Merry-Go-Round)" and has different verses, but the chorus is basically
the same, although the mix may be a tad different.
At any rate,
one of the bonus tracks is an alternate version entitled "Mary Go Round"
where we hear (finally! but what are they doing here???) the original
verses from "Yes I Do"! It is not an exaggeration to say that the
reissue of this great album contains two previously unreleased versions
of the orignal album-closer, but they forgot to include the original
version. Weird. How does an entire band and its management overlook
this? Or at least explain to the fans what happened?
The other
bonus material is awesome, particularly the live version from 1982 of
"President Gas." If only we could have gotten a live version of "Love My
Way"...
