Furniture: Singapore Tour 2005
By Ivan Thomasz
November 27, 2005
Guinness Theatre, The Substation
Singapore
Klang Valley-based band Furniture have come a long way since their appearance last year at a free gig in Malaysia's largest shopping mall, Berjaya Times Square, Kuala Lumpur, when -- out of the crowd of several hundreds -- only about five people had come specially just to see them play. According to lead singer/guitarist Ronnie Khoo the crowd there was mainly interested in seeing fellow Malaysians such as pop singer Penny Tai and Malaysian Idol Jaclyn Victor. "The moment we started playing, the crowd just parted and left!" says Khoo.
Much to Furniture's delight, such was not the case when they played a showcase in conjunction with the local release of their debut album, Twilight Chases The Sun at the Guinness Theatre at the Substation, Sunday night. There was almost a full house crowd of about 200 odd souls that had come specially to see them that evening.
Complemented by a somewhat interactive projected backdrop of intriguing animated graphics, Singapore minimalist trio Life Without Dreams opened the evening with their own unique brand of down-tempo, moody, atmospheric pieces, highly reminiscent of much of the repertoire on the indie label 4 A.D. One hopes to see more of this promising group in the future. The next up were up-and-coming 'baby' Singapore band The Subway Stars. With their Muse, Coldplay and Radiohead influences being worn so obviously on their collective sleeves, this quite conventional indie guitar-based four-piece band seemed largely out of place on this occasion dominated by groups with more esoteric and experimental leanings. Save for a minor technical fault at the start of their set, the band played very well and tight together. The Subway Stars promises to offer much more in the future, only if they're willing to work harder and longer at forging their own distinctive style and to wean themselves off their tendency to closely imitate their current alt-rock idols.
With their own distinctive and dynamic display of improvisational guitars-bass-and-drums-driven noise, final support four-men band, KLPHQ almost stole the show from their headlining fellow countrymen. While still adhering to a largely harmonic skeletal framework, the band totally deconstructed traditional song structures, did away completely with vocals, and thrilled the crowd with a 20-minute-long set of an unrelenting barrage of freewheeling, eardrum-piercing squalling guitars and pile-driving drums. By the end of their awe-inspiring, incendiary freeform set -- the height of which saw the leading guitarist actually whacking the drummer's hi-hat cymbals with his axe! -- the crowd was whooping with extreme delight and wanting more. But alas, these dark horses had to make way for the other stars of the night, the much celebrated Furniture.
Compared to the spontaneous, anarchic beauty of KLPHQ's set, Furniture's showcase was a study in the calibrated balance between harmony and dissonance. Beginning their set behind a black, translucent curtain, Furniture started off with the dulcet tinkling tones of the title track of their debut album. At a dramatic drop of the black drapes, the band launched into the big, driving hypnotic sounds of "Chasing Tipperary," which this writer thinks is the most obvious choice for the lead single off the same album. The band followed this with "Now I'm Gonna Take a Vacation," which, like their other songs with vocals on them, featured the fragile, somewhat twee and often barely discernible tenor voice of Ronnie Khoo that threatened to crack in certain places. The music of Furniture can be best described as layers of grandly sweeping, melodious guitars -- care of Khoo and Kacy Chong -- often alternating between laidback and trance-inducing riffs and heavy power chords, and built upon the bedrock of a rhythm section featuring the solid, instinctive drumming of Jeremy Liew and the subtly expressive bass of Adrian Yap. It was especially a joy to behold Chong screwing his face up and frantically attacking his instrument in accord with the adrenalin rush he was obviously feeling as he attempted to reach for the unreachable at the heights of the ecstatic freakout jams that took place at the ends of such numbers as "Postcards" and "Hush, The Dead Are Dreaming." All in all, Furniture delivered a highly satisfying performance that spoke volumes for their maturity as band with a fully-fledged style of their own, and which closely mirrored the dreamy, wistful, shoegazing-inspired sound and spirit of their debut album.
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