Summary.
Lawrence Hayward's Felt played hypnotic pop
that was often derivative of Television and the Velvet Underground. The
singles, such as
Something Sends Me To Sleep (1981), Penelope Tree (1983),
Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow (1984) and
Primitive Painters (1985), and the
mini-album Splendour Of Fear (1984) created a dense and shimmering
texture for the vocalist to face his Lou Reed-ian ghosts.
Martin Duffy's keyboards embellished the
lengthy enchanted madrigals of
Forever Breathes The Lonely Word (1986), which almost sounded by a
different band.
Full bio.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Felt, a band from Birmingham, were among the most original innovators of British rock during the punk era. Their guitar-driven rock, dominated by instrumental passages, anguished and stunned, seemed endowed with a metaphysical quality that stood in stark contrast to the noisy music of the time, recalling the self-flagellations of Tom Verlaine, while the vocals chased the ghosts of Lou Reed and Bob Dylan.
The series of whimsical 45s began with the singles Index (Shangai) in 1979 and Something Sends Me To Sleep (Cherry Red) in 1981. The latter brought them their first popularity. The 1981 mini-album, Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty, recorded roughly (the overture of Evergreen Dazed deserved better dynamics), and the singles My Face Is On Fire from 1982 (whose B-side, Trails Of Colour Dissolve, features a suggestive galloping rhythm) and Penelope Tree from the following year (with a guitar flourish reminiscent of Duane Eddy) only occasionally hinted at the group's talent.
Maturation began in 1984 with the mini-album Splendour Of Fear. What captivated listeners were especially the guitar intertwining la Television, with Maurice Deebanks fractured, morbid riffs, transcendent progressions reminiscent of Indian music, and Lawrence Haywards fragile lament. The whole coalesced into a crystal-clear, minimal sound, subdued yet charged with repressed emotion.
Of the six tracks, three are purely instrumental. In the martial step of Red Indians, whose timid chimes conceal traces of medieval folk and raga, the Indian-derived style culminates in the majestic crescendo of The Optimist And The Poet. But the masterpiece of their counterpoint is probably to be found in the minimalism of the frenzied intertwined variations of Mexican Bandits.
In the sung tracks, also wrapped in delicate guitar textures that seem to cradle their stories for eternity, Hayward oscillates between Verlaines agonized tone (The World Is As Soft As Lace) and Lou Reeds weary tone (Stagnant Pool). More than singing, in truth, he seems to sink into psychic catalepsy.
Confirming his stature as a guitarist, Deebank also released a solo album that year, Inner Thought Zone.
The summer single, Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow, instead revived the more melodious, airy style of the early singles, bolstered by a tribal cadence and a continuous cascade of guitar chordsa kind of neurotic jingle-jangle. The October album, The Strange Idols Pattern, essentially fused the (more pop) Felt of the singles with the (more transcendent) Felt of the mini-albums. The songs thus freed themselves from the two-chord limitation, though in the new format they did not regain the same intensity.
For the 1985 single Primitive Painters, keyboardist Martin Duffy joined the group (Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins provides backing vocals). That hallucinatory song, unusual for Felts style, is reflected in the album Ignite The Seven Cannons, with the epic Morricone-like instrumental Elegance Of An Only Dream and the lively danceable The Day The Rain Came Down.
Deebank was at the peak of his form, capable of redeeming an anonymous track with a delicate arpeggio. Yet he was precisely the one missing for the EP Ballad Of The Band (Creation), featuring the insistent and melodious title track, the Byrds-style guitar folk of I Didn't Mean To Hurt You, and Satie-like piano sonata of Magellan, which in spring 1986 effectively opened Felts second phase, characterized by the use of piano and organ (exemplary Ferdinand Magellan).
The true manifesto of the new course, however, is the purely instrumental mini-album Let The Snakes Crinkle Their Heads (1986 - Cherry Red, 2005) of September (with grim aphorisms such as the micro-requiem Voyage To Illumination). The production is the most professional of their career, but the tracks, mostly very short, do not justify the effort.
The EP Rain Of Crystal Spires, which, in addition to the galloping folk-rock of the title track, also features the lively garage-surf of Sandman's On The Rise and the sprightly baroque fugue of I Will Die With My Head In Flames, is the first successful record of this phase. It was quickly followed by All The People I Like, a prototype of their long, enchanted madrigals tinged with lysergic moods, and by the bleak Grey Streets and the driving folk-rock of Gather Up Your Wings And Fly on the album Forever Breathes The Lonely Word (Creation, 1986 Cherry Red, 2005), one of the liveliest in their repertoire.
Having reached a peak with these works, the two 1987 releasesthe mini-album Poem Of The River and the EP Final Resting Of The Ark (a subdued guitar ballad halfway between Donovan and Barrett, paired with its B-side There's No Such Thing As Victory)already experimented with new forms, mostly attempting to reinvent the role of keyboards (and thus Duffy). The Poem, in particular, returns to the format of their early works and includes some of their best songs: Silver Plane, echoing Dylans Blonde On Blonde; She Lives By The Castle, whispered amid a gentle chime of guitars; Riding On The Equator, of almost religious intensity; and Stained-Glass Windows In The Sky, a syncopated organ soul piece. On the EP, Autumn, an organ sonata worthy of Satie, also stands out.
Inconsistency and confusion are also hallmarks of the two 1988 albums, Pictorial Jackson Review, caught between a pop side (highlights include Bitter End, still in the jingle-jangle style of the Byrds, and Don't Die On My Doorstep, still echoing Blonde On Blonde) and an ambient side (divided between the twelve minutes of Sending Lady Load, reminiscent of Robert Fripp, and the trance of shattered chords in Darkest Ending), and Train Above The City, practically a Duffy instrumental album featuring Broadway-like themes such as Book Of Swords.
After the sensual single Space Blues (funky pauses, soul chorus, Arabic violin, and insinuating organ), with the almost ambient trance of Be Still on the B-side, in 1989 Felt finally found a replacement for Deebank in guitarist John Mohan and recorded Me And A Monkey On The Moon (El), which would remain their last album.
By increasing the transcendental quality of Television-style jams, Felt arrived at a rock genre bordering on light music and new age, not too far from the sounds of Aztec Camera, Lloyd Cole, and the Smiths. Haywards obsessive vocal identification with Lou Reed, however, always kept this music in a less commercial, more unsettling limbo.
Absolute Classic Masterpieces (1992) compiles all the early singles.
Hayward returned to the spotlight with Denim on Back In Denim (Boy's Own, 1992), a blatant revival of 1970s glam rock. The albums tracks chronicle his personal experiences of the era, from Middle Of The Road (which is actually a cover of Roadrunner by the Modern Lovers) to The Osmonds (eight minutes long). Four years later came Denim On Ice (Echo, 1996), an even more bitter attack on the phenomena of his timealmost a malicious parody of new wave and punk rock.
Martin Duffy died at the end of 2022.
