More about: FUR

Between the four of them, FUR can’t have spent more than £100 on the outfits they’re wearing for their headline show at London’s Scala. Charity and vintage shop mavens though they are, the effect is still convincing: Murray, Tav, Flynn and Josh look like a rock ’n’ roll band straight out of 1969. And with songs like the fantastically-popular ‘If You Know That I’m Lonely’, they sound like one too. 

Sprawling in all of their thrifted splendour on the stone steps of Scala’s red backstage area, FUR are excitedly anticipating their show: the last in a short run of UK dates and their biggest headlining appearance to date. The room is full and thrilled when the band enter stage left, the result, vocalist Murray tells us, of familiarity: “I think a lot of people were discovering us [on the last tour], whereas this tour there’s a lot of people who are already fans.”

This time, FUR have taken in nine towns this September, spending the equivalent of a couple of days in their cramped tour van. Just getting to Dublin took “seventeen hours,” though in taking their sixties pop music to venues filled with romantically-dressed young people, FUR have travelled much further. 

As their Spotify ‘Listeners’ statistics will attest, the band are enormously popular in Southeast Asia, and in particular Indonesia, where almost 80,000 people in Jakarta, Surabaya and Bandung are listening every month. And that’s not taking in Apple Music or indeed YouTube, where ‘If You Know That I’m Lonely’ is approaching 9 million views. 

The band visited earlier this year, and are back in November to take in more of their fans’ local venues, including in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. “Someone in Indonesia grew all of their hair out and got my hair cut,” Murray tells us, referring both to the distinct, rounded curtains that surround his face, and the enthusiasm of some of their fans in the stop where they are most eagerly awaited.

Back in March, they noted how nice it felt to meet people in Indonesia face to face, rather than only to encounter them online: “we made the connection between everything we see hungover lying in bed [on our phones] and actually being there and experiencing it.” 

FUR liked Indonesia very much. Though it was too hot for their ubiquitous turtleneck jumpers, they visited several sites of interest, tried new foods (“cow skin tastes like poppadoms”) and took part in the ultimate Southeast Asian pastime of karaoke. “We went a bit overboard and got a hefty bill,” Murray says of the karaoke evening, in which The Beatles and Robbie Williams were sung to what sounds like devastating effect. 

And what is it that large swathes of people in Southeast Asia have fallen in love with? Romantic, hand-holding sixties pop songs about love and longing, delivered with a gentle modern slant and spectacular vocals. Though the bulk of their fans live across the ocean, FUR are growing in popularity in the UK, due in part to an increasingly modern-inflected discography. From the doo-wop of early release ‘Not Enough’ to last week’s ‘Trouble Always Finds Me’, FUR have taken subtle but sure steps towards a sound that sees new and unreleased stuff sound “more like modern British rock.”

Now in a writing partnership with new guitarist Josh, Murray credits the subtle shift to fresh inspiration: “I’ve always been influenced by The Libertines and The Strokes, but in Josh’s writing it shines through,” he says, adding that his new bandmate penned latest single ‘Trouble Always Finds Me’: “I think that he naturally [writes] a sound that appeals a bit more to the current UK scene.” 

The next release penned by Josh will be out soon and is to be titled ‘Do You Still Think of Me?’, which the band play tonight alongside a slew of old favourites. The new influences are certainly clear, though the vintage-tones of older releases are excitedly received by tonight’s crowd, just as they were at Omeara back in February. On Valentine’s Day at their last London show, the band left the audience “enchanted” by their love songs.

“Some of it is definitely not the worst music to have sex to,” Murray says with extraordinary diplomacy when I bring up the likelihood that people do, and likely did after the February 14th show. Anyway, FUR “could tell there were a lot of couples that had come for their Valentine’s date” so the jump isn’t a big one to make. They shrug: “if they do it’s a compliment.”

That same aphrodisiac wafts through the room during tonight’s set, though it envelops a much larger crowd than ever before. An excellent warm-up for their forthcoming trip abroad on “the smallest version of a world tour,” FUR have the songs and the wardrobe ready to ensnare fans around the globe. And there’s still “so many places that we have adoring fans but have never been” Murray says. Expect them, world. 

More about: FUR