Freur: "Matters of the Heart"

9 June 1983

"If you name looks like a worm and is pronounced like someone being a little unwell, you should have no chance, but this is a suede-skinned, juicy peach of a record."

— Mark Steels

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose double-glazing. Choose a hi-fi. Choose vitamins. Choose Breakfast Television. Choose to purchase your council flat. Choose seatbelts. Choose a sit-down Wimpy. Choose a holiday in Tenerife. Choose nuclear disarmament. Choose to believe Hugh Trevor-Roper. Choose lucozade. Choose peace in Northern Ireland. Choose Steve Cram. Choose getting a video for the kids.

A couple weeks' back in the so-called "cop" piece that closes out these entries, I discussed "The Stand" by The Alarm, who I argued were at the forefront of Welsh pop due to there being absolutely no one else. Not true at all. There was Alison Statton, formerly of Young Marble Giants but this time vocalist for post-punk smooth jazzers Weekend, who enjoyed a SOTF a year earlier with "Past Meets Present". One of Britain's biggest acts of the time, Shakin' Stevens, also happened to be Welsh. But it wasn't a region overflowing with musical talent and the very fact that I keep thinking about late-eighties sophisti-pop one-hit wonders Waterfront says it all.

Emerging out of Cardiff in 1983 was synth-pop gloomsters Freur. In fact, they were never called Freur, that was simply how one pronounced their name. They used a symbol and only came up with 'Freur' as a compromise with their record label. A good ten years before Prince cooked up his in-no-way pretentious "name" (with the much lengthier pronunciation of "the Artist Formerly Known as Prince"), this Welsh quartet must have really thought they were on to something with their, in the words of Kimberley Leston, "squiggle resembling a poorly tapeworm". The squiggle got them to number 59 in the charts with their first single "Doot-Doot' (either that or their eccentric name prevented them from getting any higher) and this was its follow-up. Not a great song but a marked improvement over its insubstantial predecessor. Trying for that glacial snyth sound that worked so well on Ultravox's "Vienna" and OMD's "Souvenir", it works out for them musically with a beautifully ghostly sound but it's a lyrical mess. It has lines that seem be meant to be profound but, upon closer study and thought, are mostly just nonsense. "Clowns in the street / The city is asleep / And no one hears a beat"? Hmmm, I'd be interested in investigating quite what they're getting at if I wasn't convinced they were churning out whatever sounds good. If the song's thesis is 'matters of the heart are complicated, you know' then I can't disagree but if leaves me wondering why I should care.

It is perhaps with this musical proficiency/lyrical ineptness in mind that Freur would gradually shift towards techno ambiance. Not strictly instrumental nor with a particular emphasis on samples and/or guest vocalists from the pop/rock "scene" but with certainly less importance placed on vocals. It's not an especially big leap to make going from synth-pop to electronica but it was something very few were able to pull off (indeed, it was a shift not many seemed interested in attempting). Dave Nonis, Mark Almond's mustachioed cohort in Soft Cell, would eventually re-emerge in nineties techno boffins with banjos The Grid but, by and large, your Vince Clarke's and Chris Lowe's who headed up the technical side of their acts avoided going full-on big beat. Freur embraced changes in the musical landscape and ended up as Underworld. 

Choose life. Choose success. Choose film soundtracks. Choose rave. Choose hardwood flooring. Choose Michael Eavis. Choose credibility. Choose the Full Moon Party on Ko Pha-ngna. Choose New Labour. Choose lad mags. Choose ecstasy. Choose authenticity.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Lotus Eaters: "The First Picture of You"

They had a good name for a band, a melody that implants itself in the brain (and not just after a night out, as Steels suggests, even though I totally get singing something tragically romantic when stumbling home alone from the bars...that was basically my twenties), a lead singer with no apparent shyness for mugging for a camera and a song that probably got them a shag or two. So why does "The First Picture of You" feel a bit off? Well, as Steels says, there's a little too much preciousness here but maybe that's to be expected. This was their first single and it's nice but it smacks of dreamy sixteen-year-old idealism. (I keep thinking back to all the rubbish poetry I wrote at that age which does provide perspective: given that I wrote something called "A Fortnight Away She Shall Be", I would've traded my left nut to have composed "The First Picture of You") While it took Freur more than a decade, not to mention a much-needed name change, to build themselves into a success, The Lotus Eaters may have hit it big way too fast. This pleasant but unremarkable song should have been a sign of things to come.