Dustin and the Furniture

Dancing on Nothing

(Oh! Map)

Record Review by Caitlin McGuire

Dustin and the Furniture are a cute little novelty act. Their press release was written in Microsoft Word, not in one of those fancy multi-boxed deals where everything’s all nicely packaged. Their album, Dancing on Nothing, was recorded behind “the guest house behind” Dustin’s dad’s house in Georgia, as well as Keith Freund’s basement. Most people keep that kind of thing secret. For God’s sake, their email’s domain is gmail.com! What band doesn’t use their own band name as their domain?

Apparently, Dustin and the Furniture. And they’re adorable in their do-it-yourself-ness, they really are. I was first hooked on the band when I heard their single, “MySpace Comments Won’t Save You” on some random mp3 blog site. I promptly uploaded it onto my iPod and spent the week pushing my headphones at MySpace bulletin abusers, incurring their wrath by insisting, “See! I’m not the only one that hates the things you do!” Twee lyrics like “Trees grow just by living / We should look up to them for that” and “The whole point of dancing is to dance” on “A Musical Thing” are simple, yet confounding, and are briefly intoned over the sound of gently strummed guitar and a harmonica that strangely enough didn’t piss me off. Yet my favorite song on Dancing on Nothing would have to be “Rap Song.” I never get tired of white boys trying to rap about the problems in the world.

Do you like Leonard Cohen? Do you like the obnoxiously lo-fi Bright Eyes songs? No doubt you’ll love Dustin and the Furniture. As an added bonus, they’re willing to barter on the price of Dancing on Nothing, claiming to take any payment between one dollar and ten (though I’m sure they’d be happy to take more) in exchange for a CD. Dustin and the Furniture is the kind of [one-man] band that’s missing in the world today: they’ve forced their way into the underground sending anything they had across the world just to make a name for themselves.

I doubt I’ll listen to Dustin And The Furniture in the long-term, since I’m more of an electronic and overly-produced listener. But in the course of listening to their brave 21-song CD, I have to say I’m proud of the album Dustin and the Furniture created. Dustin is witty and creative, and sounds something like how you’d hope your little brother’s band would sound.

As Dustin and the Furniture would hate me to say, “Go add Dustin and the Furniture on your MySpace!”