Furniture Music For Evening Shuttles

Released

On their fourth album, New York’s Tower Recordings found their way. If previous albums had them exploring particular fascinations (acid folk on Fraternity of Moonwalkers; group sound on Let the Cosmos Ring), Furniture Musiv had them combining everything effortlessly, and reaching out yet further, to take in Tropicalia – see their humid, dainty cover of Os Mutantes’ “Q Delmak-O,” which dissolves into a ‘say love’ chant, sampling free jazz musician Brother Ah; from there, “The Nine Billion Names of God” is pure psych-folk worship, a buzzsaw guitar cutting through the medieval melancholy. As the album develops, things get hazier, woozier, as though the collective are beaming in their songs and improvisations from a fugged-out, blurry television set. They’d go on to make better albums, but Furniture Music is a great snapshot of everything Tower Recordings could do.

Jon Dale