Comments on: The Yummy Fur

The Yummy Fur

LSK — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 20:39:04 -0800

If you only have three minutes to spend on this post, listen to this song. The Yummy Fur was an unfairly obscure Scottish art-rock group active from 1992-1999. The group is best known for having two band members who currently comprise half of Franz Ferdinand, but that says little about the Yummy Fur proper. The group has a low-fi, angular, sound with mostly-spoken lyrics - the most familiar analogue might be the verses from Pavement's "Stereo"

The song linked above is a live performance of "Shoot the Ridiculant". from the group's final release - the 1998 Sexy World. The group's first EP, "Music By Walt Disney But Played By Yuri Gagarin, Thus A Political Record" was released on indie label Slampt in 1995. Four songs from the release. The EP contains ten songs in total, each less than one minute long. Their first two albums, Night Club and Kinky Cinema, each feature many more super-short songs: The second has a whopping 60 songs in 69 minutes! Highlights from Night Club include Kirsty Cooper and Roxy Girls. (Kinky Cinema is available as a free download off Last.fm, so I'll leave you to discover that for yourselves.) The group's third and fourth albums, Male Shadow At Three O' Clock and Sexy World, have longer songs that could've been major indie hits in another universe. Highlights include Department and Vacuum Cleaner off Male Shadow and Deathclub, The Ballad of Piggy Wings, and Shoot the Ridiculant (a different version from the live one at the top of the post) off Sexy World. This post would be incomplete without the amazing single-only track, Policeman. The group reunited in 2010 to perform some tour dates in anticipation of a best-of compilation titled "Piggy Wings" - which was apparently unreleased, as there isn't a track listing or cover image online. Because the group is inactive and not familiar, their releases are nearly impossible to find in record stores. If you can't find a physical release or a download, the next closest thing is a high-quality recording of a live show from WYNC's "No Cover" series, where they perform all the songs that would probably have been on their greatest hits album. The group also recorded a Peel session. Currently, members of The Yummy Fur perform as part of the groups Franz Ferdinand and 1990s. This is only a starting point, and I didn't go into depth on the band's history or other releases. If you're looking for more detail, the official tribute website is remarkably complete. However, it doesn't include audio, and it's hard to find the group's albums even through illegitimate means. Some songs don't have readily available Youtube uploads. Live versions were included where possible to make up for that. (TL;DR: a Scottish indie band for fans of Pavement's "Stereo")

By: Ursula Hitler

Ursula Hitler — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 22:27:44 -0800

I'm amazed that I've never heard of them before, given that back in the 1990s I was a huge fan of Yummy Fur, the Chester Brown comic book that gave the band its name. I'd be curious to hear what he thought of them... Hopefully this wasn't one of those Love and Rockets situations, where the band takes the name of a long-running comics series without asking, over the bitter objections of the original comics artists.

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 00:24:25 -0800

So this is the other Yummy Fur? Actual but less known version. Our version changed their name to 'Six Mile High' or something. They were big, at the time.

By: radiosilents

radiosilents — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 00:24:47 -0800

i did not know that!

By: mippy

mippy — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 01:32:29 -0800

They remind me a lot more of The Fall than Pavement, particularly my favourite, Exact Copy of H Friendly. I was given some mp3s of them a few years ago as I was going through a huge Fall phase (albeit The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall, which compared to their earlier stuff sounds like a Westlife album) and they complemented each other perfectly. Ursula Hitler - there was also Urusei Yatsura, who were another Scottish band who named themselves after a comic book, and were ace - though I think they were known as 'Yatsura' in the US. TYF were a really, really small band, so I'd be surprised if Chester Brown had come across them.

By: ShutterBun

ShutterBun — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 03:42:16 -0800

And here I thought it was just a comic. (resumes listening to/reading Love and Rockets)

By: ShutterBun

ShutterBun — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 03:42:48 -0800

(eep...it seems I was beaten to the punch. Doh.)

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 03:50:31 -0800

Hands down the best Glasgow band of the 90s, which is saying something given the bands knocking about the city at that time. They remind me a lot more of The Fall than Pavement Yeah, if memory serves, John Yummy Fur is a human Fall encyclopedia. I forget which song it's from, but one of my favourite lines of his is 'We rip off The Fall'. My favourite is 'Bourgeois! Spastic! Everything's turning to plastic.', closely followed by 'I'm not American, don't call me Thurston.' there was also Urusei Yatsura Two friends and I wrote a fanzine named after the absurdly handsome guitarist from Urusei - one time in the NME there was a full page photo of Lungleg, all of them reading a copy! I remain proud of this. I wish you'd made this post when I was in the same city as my 7"s.

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 03:58:20 -0800

Oh, and if you like the Fur, you should probably check out Lungleg, Dick Johnson and Trout (who really were the 'unfairly obscure' Glasgow band of that era).

By: clvrmnky

clvrmnky — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 06:45:53 -0800

Yuri Gagarin is sort of an indie music touchstone, isn't he?

By: item

item — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 07:43:23 -0800

I like the Fall and remember Yummy Fur.

By: Seekerofsplendor

Seekerofsplendor — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:01:48 -0800

1968 garage band fans fans, unite!

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 14:41:21 -0800

They're also one of those bands that handily name-checks themselves and Liliput was how I heard about the band Liliput/Kleenex.