Felt – 2022 CD reissues (Cherry Red Records)

Cherry Red revisits the labyrinthine and idiosyncratic ten-album run of Felt once again, with freshly-reupholstered CD editions

Although there has been some Discogs-based disquiet about latter-day Felt back catalogue resurrections undergoing some excessive tinkering by founder Lawrence (seldom used full name: Lawrence Hayward) – with some content and presentational tweaks already applied to 2018’s deluxe vinyl editions and CD & 7” mini-boxsets and now further visual refashioning across fresh standalone 2022 CD editions in minimalist Penguin paperback-like sleeves – Cherry Red Records should nevertheless be commended for keeping such a curiously compelling long player catalogue physically available in its entirety.

Certainly, Lawrence’s oft-stated and fulfilled grand plan to release ten albums over the ten years of the West Midlands band’s existence – which began in 1979 – could be misunderstood without everything in print.

Whilst this slightly rueful latecomer to the Felt canon would still have preferred some of the iconic artwork of yore to have been retained and for there to have been another accompanying compilation of non-album singles/EPs material (like say an expanded version of 2003’s out of print Stains on a Decade), there is still lot of deeply satisfying and intriguing history lessons to be learned from this very latest round of reissues.

Recorded primarily by the original core line-up of Lawrence (vocals/guitar), Maurice Deebank (guitar/bass) and Gary Ainge (drums), 1982’s Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty is an enigmatic place to start. Clocking in at just over 30 minutes, the album gathers an endearingly nascent set of sweet spots through its cast of characters. With Deebank’s gorgeously languid guitar work underpinning and steering things throughout, Ainge’s highly effective Moe Tucker-infused neo-primitive percussion beds and Lawrence’s furtive back-of-the-mix mumbles, there’s a lot that shouldn’t work about this debut on paper yet it still gels together with an otherworldly allure.

Veering from the exquisite electro-acoustic instrumental opener “Evergreen Dazed” through the aching chimes and murmurs of “Fortune” and “Birdmen”, across the ethereal tiering of “Cathedral” and the twanging twirling of “I Worship the Sun” to the dank post-punk-meets-psych desolation of the closing “Templeroy”, Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty is the darkly mesmeric missing link between The Velvet Underground’s 1965 loft space demos and the early-4AD catalogue.

Such a stew of influences is even more intoxicatingly stirred and marinated on 1984’s similarly short The Splendour of Fear. With Lawrence only singing on two tracks and newly-added bassist Mick Lloyd adding extra anchoring, this very much feels like Deebank’s finest moment at the sonic fulcrum of Felt’s primordial phase. Spreading his guitar lines over a wider canvass in near-tandem with those of Lawrence, the record if stuffed full of dreamy and occasionally stark set-pieces.

From the four quite wonderful wordless pieces – the elegant filigree-laden “Red Indians”, the curling prowling “The Optimist and the Poet”, the gently motorik “Mexican Bandits” and the somnolently baroque “A Preacher in New England” – it’s easy to see why Glen Johnson is such a devout Felt fan given the similarities with Piano Magic’s most ornate guitar tapestry weavings.

Whilst the two vocal-topped cuts find Lawrence further to the front over similar six-string led structures, to pensively croon on “The World is as Soft as Lace” and “The Stagnant Pool”, his presence is somewhat shyly muted. On the whole however, The Splendour of Fear is a beguiling well-aged gem.

Lawrence properly finds his singing voice with 1984’s The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories. Adopting a more defined Tom Verlaine-meets-Bob Dylan drawl (that has served as his main vocal mode pretty much ever since its inception), whilst Deebank brings more jangle and strum to proceedings and Ainge is allowed the use of a full drumkit, this third collection crosses over into far more melodic art-pop terrain.

Therefore, “Roman Litter”, “Spanish House”, “Sunlight Bathed in The Golden Glow” and “Dismantled King is off The Throne” sprint along like charmingly lower tech takes on R.E.M.’s Reckoning and early singles from The Go-Betweens whilst “Vasco Da Gama” and “Crystal Ball” feel like Television after a touch of Byrds flu.

Yet alongside more once contemporaneous conformities, there’s still space for further divine Deeback-driven instrumental intervals, such as the upliftingly spartan “Sempiternal Darkness”, the elegiac electro-acoustic meditations of “Imprint” and the finger-picked Spanish guitar shapes of “Crucifix Heaven”. Although somewhat of a transitional affair, The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories is indubitably an essential part of the early-Felt saga.

1985’s Ignite the Seven Cannons documents another key stage in Felt’s lifespan; featuring an expanded roll-call that brings in long-serving keyboard maestro Martin Duffy and the one-off assistance of two-thirds of The Cocteau Twins, with Robin Guthrie producing throughout and Elizabeth Fraser adding vocals to one track.

Fuller sounding through murky-layering, the LP certainly bears the fingerprints of Guthrie’s reverb-loving studio tropes, to the point where Lawrence has deemed the need to apply his aforementioned recent tinkering, primarily through remixing some of the vocals and dropping one of the original eleven songs. Without another older pre-2018 edition to compare and contrast, it’s impossible to tell how far things stray into history being rewritten but Ignite the Seven Cannons certainly doesn’t feel overtly cleaned-up.

Hence, Duffy’s keyboards entwine with Deebank and Lawrence’s smeared yet still agile guitar lines as the defining setup of the record. This leads us through the swirling organ-driven “My Darkest Light Will Shine”, the giddy guitar tones and harmonies of “The Day Rain Came Down”, the muddy but rousing “Sugar Hiccup”-meets-“Like a Rolling Stone” churn of the Fraser-bolstered minor-hit “Primitive Painters”, the proto-shoegaze on the instrumental “Elegance in D”, the Fables of Reconstruction folk-rocking of “Caspian Sea” and the vocal-free jangling jam bliss of “Southern State Tapestry”.

Whilst somewhat aesthetically awkward in places, in the main Ignite the Seven Cannons is a flawed but still charismatic period piece. Sadly though, it does also capture the last recorded appearances of Deebank with the band.

As Felt’s first album for Creation at the time after moving over from Cherry Red, 1986’s The Seventeenth Century (originally put out under the less snappy title of Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death) is another creative curveball after its more crossing-over predecessor. Clocking in at just under twenty minutes and compromised of ten very short instrumentals, the collection is not without its attractions.

With Lawrence proving to be no six-string slouch in the wake of Deebank’s departure and Duffy flexing supple musical muscles on his keyboards throughout, there are some warming quixotic moments that refresh the palate and the palette after the somewhat over-saturated Ignite the Seven Cannons.

Consequently, the fairground swirl of “Song for William S. Harvey”, the languorous jazzy balm of the now title track and “Indian Scriptures”, the spidery “Ancient City Where I Lived”, the pastoral psych of “The Palace” and the almost-hymnal comforts of “Voyage to Illumination” would all have sat pretty snugly as interludes between voice-led pieces on earlier Felt LPs, even if the organ-led sketchings of “Sapphire Mansions” and “Viking Dress” feel rather makeweight.

In stark contrast and also from 1986 is Forever Breathes the Lonely Word, arguably the most rounded and tuneful Felt long player. With the long-running core four-piece of Lawrence, Duffy, Ainge and Marco Thomas bolstered but not overcrowded by male and female backing vocalists, the eight-track set chugs along with an almost joyous melodic momentum. Whilst retaining some of the cavernous feel of Ignite the Seven Cannons it has better hooks and production to satisfyingly join the dots between Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, the third eponymous Velvet Underground album, Television’s sorely underrated Adventure and The Smiths’ The Queen is Dead.

High-points along the way include the organ-riding glide of “Rain of Crystal Spires”, the yearning low-slung “Down But Not Yet Out”, the soaring sprint of “September Lady”, the carnivalesque “Grey Streets” and the light/dark “All the People I Like and Those That Are Dead”.

Unquestionably one of the go-to keepers in the Felt canon in short.

After such an artistic peak just over the halfway point, somewhat inevitably an unevenness seems to have impacted on the post-Forever Breathes the Lonely Word works. That’s not to say that the remainder of the discography should be ignored though.

The deeper stylistic delving into folk and Americana on 1987’s Poem of the River – with its nods to New Morning-era Dylan – fits a warm and wobbly niche. Even if it feels a little insubstantial overall, the yearning six-minute “She Lives by the Castle” and the rambling near-nine-minute “Riding on the Equator” are noticeably made endearing by their gospel-patterned organ beddings from the dexterous Duffy.

1988’s ensuing The Pictorial Jackson Review is a more fulsome if still patchy affair. Another album to have had a recent reconfiguration by Lawrence – that jettisons two Duffy-penned instrumentals that once occupied the second vinyl side in favour of otherwise unreleased recordings – it is rather front-loaded with its strongest songs. Thus, good things primarily come in the shape of “Apple Boutique”, “Ivory Past”, “Until the Fools Get Wise” and “Bitter End”, which steer courses successfully into the country-rock seas of the early-70s Byrds and the most buoyant Band-assisted parts of The Basement Tapes, before the rest of proceedings drift into less memorable waters.

1988’s other long playing Felt release, Train Above the City, is either the product of writer’s block or a Situationist exploitation of Creation’s freewheeling spirit prior to signing Oasis, depending on your perspective. With Lawrence apparently only devising track titles, the collection is an instrumental duo outing for just Duffy and Ainge. Heavy on vibraphone, piano and brushed drums, the eight-part suite is a subversive yet authentic stab at cabaret, cocktail-jazz, Burt Bacharach and saloon bar improv, that vacillates between the slightly silly and the surprisingly sincere.

Rather than let things peter out in a ‘will this do?’ fashion, to reach the ten albums/ten years goal, 1989’s swansong Me and a Monkey on the Moon is remarkably different to its three immediate predecessors. Formatively appearing on Cherry Red subsidiary imprint Él due to Creation’s money woes, it documents the largest augmented line-up of the group – expanded by guitarists John Mohan and Richard Left, backing vocals from Rose McDowall and Pete Astor as well as Primal Scream’s Robert Young on bass and guest spots from veteran pedal steel session man B.J. Cole – delivering arguably Felt’s most expansive and most produced assemblage.

Whilst in passages it is a little overcooked – with bloated guitar soloing inside the overlong “New Day Dawning” and the likeminded “Budgie Jacket” and with “Free” just being a touch too tasteful – in general the more professionalised ensemble arrangements serve the songs very well.

Bridging the gap between The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers and the Muscle Shoals-worshipping sounds of Primal Scream’s Give Out But Don’t Give Up, this is probably as Southern-fried as a British band could get in 1989. Top draw moments include the stirring pedal steel-coated and harmony-soaked “I Can’t Make Love to You Anymore”, the boogieing strut of “Mobile Shack”, The Weather Prophets-tinted chug of “Cartoon Sky” and the airy country-funk-blues finale of “Get Out of My Mirror”.

Whilst a far cry from the grainy enigmas of Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty long before it, Me and a Monkey on the Moon is a solid full stop at the end of an inspiring and occasionally baffling story.

Cherry Red Records

Main feature photo credit: Jim Phelan