Furniture — She Gets Out The Scrapbook: The Best Of... (compilation review)

FURNITURE
She Gets Out The Scrapbook
(The Best Of . . .)
(Survival/All formats)

WHADDYA KNOW? Five minutes after your hack is caught eulogising over the past wonders of Furniture's 'The Wrong People' in NME's recent 'Lost Albums' spread, along trundles a 'Best Of' compilation from the undersold band who played Rumania. And won.

Rescued from four long-players and a plethora of legal travesties, herein lies 14-odd (in both senses of the word) anthems for bedsit-bound romantics and musical masochists. Alongside the traditional gizmos of pop, you'll find tongue drums, synclaviers and something called a Yans Ci'in, all of which are deployed as weaponry in the kind of emotional warfare that makes Furniture's love lives appear as battle-scarred as miniature Vietnams.

There are weird, skeletal moments ('Dancing The Hard Bargain', 'Robert Nightmare's Story') which sound like last releases, but were actually recorded before the band moved to the Stiff label. There are previously unreleased artefacts like the breathy 'How I've Come To Hate The Moon'. And then there are several bona fide reasons for buying this album in your millions and forcing Furniture to re-form forthwith.

'Brilliant Mind' (The Hit!) remains furtively buoyant; the terrifyingly generous 'Make Believe I'm Him' has brass to blast away the most carefully-created cobwebs; 'She Gets Out The Scrapbook' is staggeringly emotive, driven along by tortured memories, while the baby oil blues of 'Slow Motion Kisses' is sufficiently sensual to make the Divinyls appear even more hapless than they really are.

Strangest of all (despite strong competition from 'Song For A Doorman' and 'One Step Behind You') is 'Farewell'; what turned out to be the last song Furniture ever recorded squirms, flushed with tragic frustration, and ultimately sealed by the telling line, "I'm so tired and I'd just like to rest for a while". Yeah, one hit but wonderful. (8)

Simon Williams