Track by Track: Race Horses take us through the inspiration behind the songs of Furniture

Welsh fivepiece Race Horses are not ashamed of their love for pop. With influences varying from Michael Jackson to Soft Cell and Dexy’s Midnight Runners, they’re the type of band who’d rarely utter the regret-tinged words “guilty pleasure”. But alike fellow Welsh acts before them – Super Furry Animals and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – their pop sensibilities come laden with an intellectual seal. Furniture is as much a record inspired by Queen as it is D.H Lawrence and Ken Loach. Their album’s lead track ‘Mates’ perfectly exemplifies the band’s knack for infectious hooks, making an entire freak-pop gem out of stretching just one word.

“We stayed in a youth-hostel with loads of Spanish tourists,” explains the band’s frontman Meilyr Jones. “We were in dorms with families, but it was good because it meant that we would get back to the hostel after a day in the studio and and dance in the disco, listen to the history of pop music, and take some influence of that into the studio the next day.

“We had spoken a lot about R&B and trying to subvert that, use those kinds of sexy rhythms and grooves that get people grinding in clubs, but turn it on it’s head. Do them with real feel, where you can hear the sound of the instruments, the sound of wood and really natural and physical.”

‘Furniture’

“Michael Jackson was an influence on the song, everything comes from the feel of the bass and the rhythm.

“I wrote these words down ‘We are furniture’ when I was out. It seemed that all around me were people in really frustrating sad relationships that had grown stale and restrictive. I thought of the visual idea of people no longer being able to see each other or excite each other, and dissolving into the background, into the wallpaper.”

‘Mates’

“I really liked the origin of the word relating to the act of mating, finding a mate, something primitive. Like furniture in a way, thinking how far people have distanced themselves from what’s natural, and the primitive act of sex.”

‘Nobody’s Son’

“This song sounds like ‘Radio Gaga’. Queen are obviously a big influence. My Dad always says this thing in Welsh “mae o’n fab i rywun”, which means “he’s somebody’s son”. Your enemy is somebody’s son, or husband or father. In the same way people aren’t born monsters, circumstances turn men into monsters, humans are turned into monsters by being made to perform monstrous acts against other humans, or by being mistreated in some way.

“The feeling of detachment from life was strong in the song in the song, also the idea of being disowned. I think it again comes back to unfair, unsustainable pressures put on people to behave a certain way.”

‘Sisters’

“I think there are lots of people who feel like they fall between groups, fall through the gaps of society- a teenager who doesn’t go to university with the rest of his friends, a 36 year old woman who hasn’t married and had children, where all her friends and having children and living a certain life – too disillusioned to feel comfortable spending time with people in their 20s, but far removed from a family life with children to be able to feel comfortable in this environment.

“Someone in a religious or conservative community who is gay but can’t be open about it. So many people that don’t fit in to any of the norm groups that we feel we ought to fit into.”

‘What Am I to Do’

“I think it’s again about the feeling of being trapped and based around the feelings of anxiety and desperation. Also my girlfriend at the time’s dad was a painter, I thought about all the nudes he’d painted, and other things.”

‘Bad Blood’

“The words owe a lot to Ken Loach‘s films. The idea of the fallen woman was mainly what was behind this, and the hard time that women have at the hands of men and an unfair society. Female struggle.I had just read Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D”urbevilles, this was an inspiration.

“But i always imagined the song set in Glasgow, or perhaps Port Talbot. I imagined tower blocks or factories and a woman who ‘has brought shame upon herself’.”

‘My Year Abroad’

“It felt seedy and i wanted to sing from the point of view of a businessman on a trip to Tokyo, the grim reality not the glamourisation of excess, using things and people, cheap thrills. I dressed up in a suit to sing this one, it felt really restrictive, like and act of bondage, I think it helped. Dress was a big part and help to me in the studio and would help put me in the mood needed for the song, I enjoyed undressing to do vocals for some songs. Our engineer Matt had to draw the curtains in the control room if I would strip off, he didn’t want to see me naked, fair enough!

“Enter The Void, the Gaspar Noe film was the biggest influence on the words and feeling of the song. I called the song’Enter the void for a while. I really wanted to capture that feeling of distortion of the mind, of the emptiness and of drugs, prostitution, money, and business.”

‘See No Green’

“This song is about objectification. It is about the loss of real freedom, real sexuality and its replacement with fake counterfeit sexuality and behaviour.

“It’s about women behaving as they think they should behave/ as men want them to behave, it is about pornography and the way it dictates how women and men feel they should be. People’s expectations of themselves and each other mean that no-one ends up behaving as they really want to behave. Society is full of self-abuse. And I tried to capture this. ‘I’m just a hotel, I’m just a place you stay’ the empty functional.

“Women giving into men through false sexualisation and men giving into women through being domesticated. It’s all in D.H Lawrence.”

‘Old And New’

“I suppose the passing of time- things gone and things to come in their place, the never-ending cycle!”

Furniture is released 10 September on Stolen Recordings / Recordings.