poppedmusic

Just Kids

Released 13th May 2016

Words: Siôn Ford

Just Kids is the debut album from London up and comers FURS, a ten track record that – if nothing else – shows a potential in a new band, and that’s always something to be excited about. Having only been released two weeks ago, the band are very much at the beginning of their journey, but what’s always impressive in these situations is how adept the band sounds considering they’re only at their first record – in the first three tracks of this album, you can already see the repertoire of style that FURS have available to them, with opening track Going Nowhere offering a sleek initial insight before its anthemic choruses, then there’s the title track which is all kinds of cool, and finally the sunlit stroll that is Holy Reviewer.

Reading into the band’s history, it’s interesting to see how the common mutual musical interest in 1970s band The Nerves has had such a binding effect on the group, both in a personal and musical sense. Considering the band that served as one of FURS’ biggest influences were themselves seen as pioneers, in the sense of taking the saturated rock scene of the 1970s in a direction that didn’t exist, it’s apparent that the group want to emulate that aspect of their music in this record. On the surface, people might just take this album as another rock album, but that would be doing FURS a massive injustice – in fact, it seems a shame to try and bracket them as one style as you fear it might take something away from their songs.

Though I’ve mentioned it already, the composure in FURS’ music is astounding considering this is their debut record, but perhaps when you look into the make-up of the group this level of playing and production is to be expected. The band itself is formed of four members, two of which had previous experience of doing this for a living. Formed after the meeting between guitarist Liam and drummer Olly while both were out in LA at what sounds like something of a crossroads for the pair, FURS was the manifestation of a few collaborative sessions; later introduced to the fold were Elle (sister of Liam) and Amina.

There’s a universal appeal with bands like FURS in that their music doesn’t want to conform to the boundaries of one genre, and they’ve proven themselves more than capable of producing songs that offer something to everyone. Sometimes it can be argued that a band loses some of its personality as a result, but that’s definitely not the case with FURS. There’s a wealth of great songs worth getting to know on this album – the surf-pop number Why Don’t You Smile?, the more disco-suited Natives and the emotive closer Gone.

Yes, it’s early days for FURS, but what we can say for certain is that the initial indications are so, so positive for them that you can’t help but be excited by what they’re going to produce next.

Listen to Just Kids here: