Furniture — She Gets Out the Scrapbook – The Best Of Furniture (compilation review)

FURNITURE
She Gets Out the Scrapbook –
The Best Of Furniture
SURVIVAL SUR 13

Formed in 1982, Ealing's Furniture were polished pop ironists who preferred a more traditional, albeit left-field, approach to the electro-pop trimmings of the prevailing ABC or Heaven 17. In Jim Irvine they had an emotive post-War crooner to squeeze light and shade out of sumptuous melodies and lovelorn and literate lyrics. Bogged down for years in red tape after the demise of Stiff, they never really had a chance. This 12-track (14 on CD) compilation spans from earlier, salad days through to the swansong album Food, Sex and Paranoia and two unreleased tracks. In retrospect, the group's white-soul dalliances sound underfed, despite the rumble of Dancing The Hard Bargain, but their European pop-cabaret persuasions still hold a lush allure, from Love Your Shoes' sardonic shuffle and their only real hit, Brilliant Mind's bristling hooks to the delicious melancholic droop of I Miss You.

★★★
Martin Aston