If the first thing that comes to mind at the mention of the legendary English alt-rock band is the title track to the 1986 movie Pretty in Pink, you’ve got some deeply rewarding catching up to do. Yes, the Furs’ enduring hit is one of the best film soundtrack songs of all time. Screenwriter John Hughes had famously excellent taste in music and named the movie after the song as their music was powerful enough to inspire an iconic teen melodrama 40 years ago.

The Psychedelic Furs were born in 1977, powered by vocalist Richard Butler and his bass player brother Tim, who together remain the heart of the band. Throughout the ’80s they combined punk and new wave sounds with a strong pop sensibility and sense of unabashed romanticism in timeless songs. The band fizzled out in the early 1990s just as a new generation of post-punk songwriters raised on The Furs took alternative rock into the mainstream. But a band this great can’t stay down for long. In 2000, the Butlers brought the Furs back as a touring act. In 2020 they released Made of Rain, their first LP in almost 30 years. The new songs are just as electric, jagged, cinematic and unmistakably Psychedelic Furs as anything the band has recorded. The Furs are not a blast from the past — they’re a testament to the power of swagger, poetry, big guitar hooks, and an effortless cool that doesn’t seem to age.

- Elizabeth Chorney-Booth