Furniture: The Wrong People – UK – CD [2010]

1. Shake Like Judy Says
2. Love Your Shoes
3. Brilliant Mind
4. She Gets Out The Scrapbook
5. I Miss You
6. Make Believe I’m Him
7. Let Me Feel Your Pulse
8. The Sound of The Bell
9. Escape into My Arms
10. Answer The Door
11. Pierre’s Fight
12. Brilliant Fragment
13. That Man You Loved [Demo]
14. Never Said [Demo]
15. To Gus
16. Turnupspeed
17. Me, You and The Name
18. It Continues
19. Brilliant Mind [Extended Version]
20. Love Your Shoes [Extended Version]

There are occasions where a reader of PPM might inquire as to whether I’ve heard a particular album and being only human, there are a lot of stimuli that manage to give me a complete pass. My first exposure to the British band Furniture was in the pages of In The City fanzine [at left] in 1985. The interview didn’t really register with me at the time. I’m not sure I ever read it, since I had not heard of the band yet. Then I got the “Some Kind Of Wonderful OST where the band had re-recorded their single “Brilliant Mind” and it was a little smooth for my tastes at the time, though not off putting. Then I have a 12″ remix CD that has the long 7:00 version form the UK 12″ of 1986. And that was it for Furniture in my Record Cell. Until now, where a commenter at PPM saw fit to actually buy me a copy and have it sent it across the Atlantic to its new home. Under such circumstances, I will definitely review on demand, as it were.

I think that part of my problem with the decidedly exquisite “Brilliant Mind” single when I encountered it just a year past its release on the “Some Kind of Wonderful” soundtrack [in a Stepehen Hague production] was that I was still a decade behind my exposure to Scott Walker and the subsequent penny drop of how to contextualize singer + songwriter Jim Irvin within the corpus of Rock. What crooners I was listening to at the time were in a decidedly dance oriented context, and the pleasures of “Brilliant Mind” were cut from a completely different musical cloth.

Another factor was the collapse of Stiff Records shortly after the release of “The Wrong People” and the LP [for there was no CD available in that long transitional period where only hit albums got the silver disc treatment] was all but invisible in the import bins in America. One cannot hear what one cannot buy. I have had this on my infinite want list ever since Cherry Red reissued the album plus it’s A/B sides and more in 2010, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. So I tip my hat to the commenter who sent this may way, because I should have been all over this album in 1986, like white on rice.

“Shake Like Judy Says” introduced us to singer Jim Irvin as he was diving into the same Walker Brothers influenced milieu as another band at the same time that I was ga-ga over… The Lover Speaks. He sang here with sensitivity and presence that allowed the drama of the arrangement and song to have the room to develop. The trumpet solo and drumming along with vibes, were strong ties to Jazz and really, this band should have been in my NWOBJP pantheon at the time. At the front of the queue. Once more, I cite the label melting down shortly after release. The muted trumpet vying with the mellow guitars as the song’s climax saw Irvin and trumpeter Martin Drover reaching a frenzied peak of intensity before the cold ending stopped on a dime. This was thrilling material!

Jangly, sustained guitar chords from Tim Whelan in the intro of “Love Your Shoes,” veered closer to Beat Pop than the shadowy Jazz alleyways if the first track. Listening to Jim Irvin sing, it was very hard to shake the sense that I’m hearing what Jarvis Cocker might have been emulating in his delivery, with the exception that Irvin was more capable of hitting the Scott Walker target that each of them was probably aiming for with a mastery of his instrument beyond anything that the Pulp singer brought to the mic. Even so, the lyrical verve of the mature Cocker was evident in the lyrics here as the refrain in the chorus was redolent of the Jarvis to come.

I had to admit, having Stephen Hague helm the re-recording of “Brilliant Mind” in 1987, did manage to plane off the interesting musical knots that were present on the original 1986 version on this album. The descending drum fills in the intro pull us right into the superb vocal and lyric of the number. The tremolo guitar and the pizzicato string hooks added catlike intrigue that was boosted even further from the sax solo that was at odds with the prevailing mid 80s ethos. The sax ad libs in the song’s climax gave the song a much darker complexion than the second version.

Next: …Jarvis Walker or Scott Cocker?