Furniture 'Brilliant Mind'

Chart Peak: 21

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Although they've been around since the end of 1982, 'Brilliant Mind' is the first Top 30 hit for Furniture. It had reached No. 21 by 15th July.

And as it proved this was the only chart appearance ever from the famously ill-fated indie act. It's also the last track on a Now album from Stiff Records, who were nearing the end of their glory period: they'd already lost Madness by this point and were soon to go bankrupt (the label was revived a few years ago, releasing singles by The Enemy and albums by Chris Difford among others).

'Brilliant Mind' has some claim to be the label's last classic and whilst only a moderate hit, it's become a staple of eighties compilation albums and it was until recently the only Furniture song I'd ever heard: I recently listened to their album The Wrong People as part of the research for this post. Whilst there are decent tracks on there, none of them made the same impression on me as this masterful record, which sounds very eighties and yet oddly contemporary, presumably because the doomy side of the decade has been revived in recent years by many a modern-day act and even the saxophone that decorates this track has suddenly reappeared as the sound of several hits in the summer of 2011. And of course there are parts of it that already sounded familiar, most notably the arpeggiated guitar figure that resembles the Beatles' 'And I Love Her'. Still, I find myself warming to this rather more than to most songs that come over so self-consciously serious; perhaps it's the aftertaste of disappointment that overhangs this song so heavily - it's easier to take the protagonist coming over as a bit self-confident and knowing when you know he's putting on a bit of a front.

Of course that disappointment looks a bit prescient when we know what happened to the band after this: they stumbled on for another five years and even did an album for a major label but finally split after filing to manage further success. Singer "big" Jim Irvin became a music journalist and has cropped up a few times in the series as a songwriter: this year he co-wrote a Number 60 hit for boy-band-with-guitars Twenty Twenty. Perhaps it's better to remember him for this.

Available on: The Wrong People