[3] However, both the follow-up single "Love Your Shoes" and the parent album The Wrong People failed to continue this success due to Stiff's financial difficulties.

[1] Upon release, High Fidelity News and Record Review said, "Bleak Stuff, the kind usually inspired by reading too many street fashion magazines or believing all the nonsense written about The Velvets.

He added, "There are thoughtful, gently-pounding dramatic ballads matched with rumbling keyboards or swirling Arabic and Eastern effects, along with muted galloping rockers with low-key vocals.

"[19] Simon Williams of New Musical Express wrote, "Furniture are immensely gifted storytellers, working on the premise that from small aches, monstrous agonies grow.

They always fall for the unorthodox elements: the shimmering, economic guitars, low profile yet hard hitting rhythms, even the mysticism of the Far East.

"[16] In the US, Steve Hochman of Los Angeles Times commented, "Rather than politics, Furniture's obsessions are all romantic – actually, about the emotionally fatal, all-consuming side of romance.

But the co-ed quintet's music is at times as haunting as McCarthy's, sometimes reminiscent of Prefab Sprout or Deacon Blue, though often more textually inventive and dynamic.