Furniture — Food, Sex And Paranoia album review

FURNITURE
Food, Sex And Paranoia
(Arista 210377 LP / Cass / CD)

Lumbered with a name of singular dullness, Furniture compensate with a new LP that would presume to gather the central preoccupations of today's smart young things into one scintillating package. And the best of luck to them, as fortune has hardly smiled so far on a band whose success with the single Brilliant Mind and debut LP The Wrong People had the rug pulled from under its feet by record company difficulties in 1986. Back with a self-confident bang, Furniture sound not unlike Country Life-period Roxy Music, but fronted by Spandau's Tony Hadley rather than Byron Ferrari [sic — Bryan Ferry]. Tim Whelan and Jim Irvin take the credit for these well-dressed songs of jaded love, even more jaded palates and general self-pity. Though not to every taste, their dynamic and intelligently conceived art-pop has an attractively decadent air, of which bassist Sally Still's singing of Song For A Doberman is a queasy highlight. ★★★

Mat Snow