Fur

It’s one thing releasing a perfectly packaged, Buddy Hollyinflected debut pop song so early on into your career, but it’s quite another when it starts amassing millions of views on YouTube and gathering a dedicated fanbase in Indonesia… Brighton quartet, Fur, are treading an exciting path that even they can’t get their heads around.

Q: The way I was introduced to the band was through ‘If You Know That I’m Lonely’ which has got something like 2.4 million views on YouTube, so I kind of just wanted to know how that happened.

A: It was really weird. It went fairly steady over three or four months, it was at around 20,000 views probably, which was really sick for us and then yeah, it just started to get a little bit crazy.

Q: Where did you film that video?

A: The New Forest. It’s actually where Ed (Zorab), the director’s from; it’s just round the corner from his family house so we’d spend every evening there, get fed pretty well by his mum and then just go out to this amazing woods and fields. I’ve done soundtracks for some of his films. We kind of do favours for each other and I think his style goes hand in hand with the music. The funny thing about the video is that it looks like summer but it was actually 7am and -2 degrees with Murray getting water tipped over his head. The new video we recorded was in the middle of summer and we’re all wearing jackets and turtlenecks.

Q: I was listening to Steve Lamacq the other day and he had you on his roundtable. Miles Kane gave you a glowing review but then it came to Brix Smith… I just wanted to know what you thought of her comments?

A: Josh messaged our group chat and he was like, fucking Brix from The Fall has just mugged us off, but you know what, I think it’s fine and I think being 21, I can tick off the bucket list that I’ve been mugged off by someone from The Fall.

Q: What did she say, again?

A: She said it needed Viagra and that it’s too derivative of that time and I think that’s fair enough; its only an opinion on one song. Some of our music is a homage to that era so it’s pretty obvious that it would sound like it, that’s kind of the point. Unfortunately, we couldn’t give her the Viagra that she needed.

Q: What is your favourite scientific discovery?

A: I heard one the other day where this scientist was at a restaurant and there was a lobster in the lobster tank that looked really different to the others and he asked if he could buy it for a stupid amount of money to take it home and dissect. He did loads of studies on it and he found out that that particular species of lobster could regenerate its cells at such a perfect rate that they’re technically immortal and can live forever unless they’re killed by a predator… penicillin is alright, too.

Q: What have you got coming up next?

A: I don’t know how much we can say. We’re working on something a bit more substantial; we’ve got a lot of music that isn’t necessarily that new. The songs that people know of ours are not where we would see ourselves at. Uploading and putting out a new video, knowing how much people loved the last one… you just don’t know how people are gonna take it. We’re massive perfectionists as well so we get super anxious to release any music and we just want everything to be perfect. We don’t want to re-record anything so when we put something out, we want to know that it’s there and will stand the test of time.

Words by Harley Cassidy | Illustration by Josh Whettingsteel