''The Wrong People'' is the second studio album by British new wave band

Furniture Furniture refers to movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., stools, chairs, and sofas), eating (tables), storing items, eating and/or working with an item, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). Fu ...

, released on 10 November 1986 by

Stiff Records Stiff Records is a British independent record label formed in London, England, by Dave Robinson and Jake Riviera. Originally active from 1976 to 1986, the label was reactivated in 2007. Established at the outset of the punk rock boom, Stiff ...

Background

In 1986, Furniture signed a

recording contract A recording contract (commonly called a record contract or record deal) is a legal agreement between a record label and a recording artist (or group), where the artist makes a record (or series of records) for the label to sell and promote. Artists ...

with independent label

. Their first release on the label was the single " Brilliant Mind", which was released in April and reached number 21 in the UK Singles Chart, giving the band their commercial breakthrough. To capitalise on the success, their former label Survival/Premonition released ''The Lovemongers'' in June, a collection of the band's earlier studio recordings. In October, the band released their follow-up single " Love Your Shoes", which was a re-recorded version of a song first released as a single in 1984. Despite becoming a radio hit, the single failed to chart after financial troubles faced by Stiff resulted in the failure to press enough copies of the single to match demand. ''The Wrong People'' soon followed in November, and was released on LP and cassette in the UK, France and Belgium. However, the album also suffered from Stiff's financial crisis. 30,000 copies were pressed, but the label then went into liquidation and was subsequently sold to ZTT Records, who opted not to press any more copies. After its release, the album became a cult classic. The band spent the next two years freeing themselves from the Stiff contract.Article on Furniture (written by Neil Nixon) in ''The Rough Guide to Rock'' (3rd edition, 2003 – editor: Peter Buckley) Meanwhile, they were able to spend time touring with the British Council in countries such as Cyprus, Turkey, Romania and Czechoslovakia. They signed to

Arista Records Arista Records () is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. The label was previously handled by BMG Entertainmen ...

in 1989 and released '' Food, Sex & Paranoia'' in 1990, but it was also a commercial failure. Afterwards, the band continued to tour and released the compilation ''She Gets Out the Scrapbook: The Best of Furniture'' in 1991, but decided to split soon after. ''The Wrong People'' remained

out-of-print __NOTOC__ An out-of-print (OOP) or out-of-commerce item or work is something that is no longer being published. The term applies to all types of printed matter, visual media, sound recordings, and video recordings. An out-of-print book is a book ...

for many years until 2010, when it was given its first CD and digital download release by

Cherry Red Records Cherry Red Records is a British independent record label founded in Malvern, Worcestershire by Iain McNay in 1978. The label has released recordings by Dead Kennedys, Everything But the Girl, The Monochrome Set, and Felt, among others, as well ...

, containing nine bonus tracks.

Critical reception

Upon its release, Derrin Schlesinger of ''

Smash Hits ''Smash Hits'' was a British music magazine aimed at young adults, originally published by EMAP. It ran from 1978 to 2006, and, after initially appearing monthly, was issued fortnightly during most of that time. The name survived as a brand fo ...

'' said, "Although the lyrics sound a mite gloomy and doomy, the music soon whisks one up into much better spirits. It is a wonderful swirling, whirling potful of different sounds."Smash Hits magazine - Review: Albums - Derrin Schlesinger - 19 November-2 December - page 92 In 1991, ''The Wrong People'' was included in a feature by '' NME'' covering a selection of "great lost albums". Reviewer Simon Williams described it as "chock-full of frisky rhythms, perverted guitar licks and the kind of emotional lyrical openness which terrified passing psychiatrists". He concluded the "intelligent, eccentric and, even better, accurate" album "should have been huge". In a review of the album's 2010 CD re-issue, Stephen Emms of '' The Guardian'' said, "This week one of the best albums ever recorded becomes available to download. Furniture's 1986 cult classic, ''The Wrong People'', fused new wave, jazz,

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

, post-punk,

alt-rock Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from Popular culture, mainstre ...

, and about a dozen other genres with some of the most poetic lyrics ever written. Yet for all its literary qualities – its evocation of the mundane, compromise, opportunity and transience of real life – ''The Wrong People'' is a theatre of the visceral, a melodrama and gorgeous sax-soaked 1980s pop all at once."

Track listing

Personnel

Furniture *

Jim Irvin Jim Irvin is an English singer, songwriter, music journalist and podcast host. Early life Born James Lawrence Irvin and raised in west London. Career Furniture Irvin was the singer in the English new wave band Furniture, who released singles ...

– vocals *Tim Whelan – guitar, vocals *Maya Gilder – keyboards *Sally Still – bass *

Hamilton Lee Hamilton Lee (born 7 September 1958 in London, England), also known by variations on Hamid Mantu, is an English musician. Lee is best known as the drummer, percussionist and co-leader of Transglobal Underground, under his "Hamid Mantu" alias. ...

– drums Additional personnel *Martin Drover – trumpet (tracks 1, 6), flugelhorn (track 5) *Larry N'Azone – saxophone (track 3) *Phil Todd – saxophone (tracks 5, 7, 10) *Charlie Buchannon, Tim Beaton – strings (track 3) * Mick Glossop – producer, recorder *Andy Mason, Dave Grant, Dave Holmes – assistant producers, assistant recorders *John Brough, Renny Hill, Seb Brough – assistant mixers (track 3) * Calum Colvin – artwork

Charts

Singles

"Brilliant Mind"

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wrong People 1986 albums Furniture (band) albums Stiff Records albums