Race Horses, Furniture review

Below is a review of Race Horses' thoroughly ace new record Furniture as it appeared in the Daily Post last Friday (Aug 31). The album is out on September 10. Buy it.

As is the precedent with Aberystwyth’s Race Horses it has become custom to expect sprawling masses of genre and style.
Although highly accomplished, 2010’s Goodbye Falkenburg was a bit of a gallimaufry. A mash of “everything [they] had listened to up to that point, all combined musically.”
The intervening years have evidently been spent grinding their pop edge until razor-sharp. Frontman Meilyr Jones has the Cocker-esque skill of injecting the everyday and the kitchen sink drama with glitz and glamour.
Pulp, in fact, are the most obvious of benchmarks. That is a Pulp flush with Sparks and glossy 80s pop balladry, making nods at Queen (see Nobody's Son), Spandau Ballet and Ultravox without the influences being contrived or too knowing.
Although the record stumbles early with the meandering What Am I To Do, elsewhere it is consistently well constructed and well realised. A trio of Furniture, Mates and Sisters is chrome-bright modern pop backed by ineffable art school pomp – a heady mix of audacity and depth.
True to the pop blueprint, the record closes with the ballad Old and New. It is a well-used formula and its results are often hackneyed. But, it is a formula for a reason and when pulled off so impeccably it is very difficult to argue with. Solid gold pop, no less.