Fractionals

At some point, without my noticing, the Psychedelic Furs became one of my favourite 80s bands. Very few of their peers (a few obvious titans notwithstanding) managed to marry tenderness and ugliness as well as they did, possessing either the kind of squall the Furs could muster up or a singer with a perfectly bad a voice as Richard Butler's, but not both.

Of course, it's to their advantage that All of This and Nothing is a nearly perfect compilation - it doesn't grab everything worthwhile they ever did, no (I can hear some friends yelling at me to pick up the albums, dammit); But it's that rare best-of that serves as both a perfect introduction if you're going to go further but also arguably all you'll ever need. A lot of these bands make me cringe when I see a 5-6 minute track coming up, but Richard Butler and company made all that repetition and excess work for them until something like "Imitation of Christ" or "Dumb Waiters" is as compelling as their lesser brethren's two-minute stompers (to say nothing of the ballads).