She Gets Out The Scrapbook (sleeve essay)

The songs of Furniture inhabit a world where love is real. This is a rare premise. Reality involves bathos and imperfections, has to settle for the night bus instead of the winged chariot, demands an effort to distil elevation from the enervated. Here, lovers constitute an unconstituted minority of two, and intelligence is just another barrier to communication. There is the curse of self-consciousness, there are the collisions and summit meetings of loneliness and independent pride. There is a mountain. When somebody sings, "the one who wants me I don't want / the one I want don't want to know", you have to believe they've seen it.

Furniture twisted and writhed through an extraordinary career, a series of rivetingly intense live shows and impeccable but sadly overlooked records. "We want to do it the best." They had bad luck, bad timing, and great ideals. On a devoted following, they rained.

Once I saw them play to a huge crowd in Bucharest during the Ceaucescu era. Security was paramount. This insecure quintet were the first group in the country's history to make a throng get up and dance, thus risking serious mass arrest and retribution. Real nasty empire-shaking repercussions. It was a moment, a symbol, a surge. Faces aghast. You had to be there. Strong men wept and so did we. Back in the U.K., people were busy watching television, numb on blips. The eighties let Furniture go over its head and around its truss. We knew this anyway. Furniture at least had one of the most unusual sole hits of all time. Small mercies. That its title had "novelty value" is perhaps horrifying. Furniture were determined not to fit, intent on proving their own theory that they were the wrong people. The right people, I guess, hide in packs and prefer bingo to sacred thrills.

This is an outstanding collection of songs, bejewelled with forbidden strands like wit, accuracy, juxtaposition and impositions. The characters flail for a grail which, if it ever comes, comes late and ambivalently lustrous. Nothing is airbrushed, but the true grit of the romantic experience — necklaces of sweat, hair in the mouth, jitters and jealousy and joy — trembles defiantly with a rosy melodrama. Sensitivity and perception do not preclude lust and magnificent gestures. Someone should send this record to the moon. Again. Heartbreak go to hell.

Furniture were consistently misunderstood. There is something very heroic and intriguing about the consistently misunderstood. I could be wrong. You have another chance.

Chris Roberts
London
August 1991.