Felt

A while ago I'd had enough of hearing the hushed whispers in which Felt's name was always mentioned and succumbed to an All Music Guide review that rapturously praised 1986's Forever Breathes the Lonely Word as "almost too perfect a pop masterpiece". All the mooning over the record may have had a suggestive effect on me, because I did love it, partly for the oft-mentioned "shimmer" of the guitars - which were fanastic - but also because of singer/brainchild Lawrence Hayward's semi monotone and often flat voice. Which is odd, because as much as I like Tom Verlaine and admire Lou Reed (Hayward's obvious influences), I certainly don't want everyone singing like them. That style Reed has, where he's kinda singing but kinda not, isn't generally what I go for in a singer. But hell if it didn't work on that Felt record; the guitar interplay was fantastic and the songs were catchy in spite of those reticent melodies. So I grabbed a few more Felt discs from around that time, and promptly forgot all about them.Initailly I was just gonna talk about 1984's The Splendour of Fear, but since it turned out to be largely instrumental I thought I would augment this listen with their other 1984 release. A couple of songs ("Spanish House", "Roman Letter") immediately struck me the way the Forever Breathes... stuff did, but not most of it. I know part of this is due to the lower production values on these two discs, especially the paper thin drums. But the guitar playing on everything - the instrumentals and the vocal songs - is exceptional. Maurice Deebank is the guy's name (he's not on the later records though) and he refuses to just play a chord, opting instead for constant arpeggios and single note runs. It's definitely a "jangly" sound but it's not just a matter of plucking out the notes on a D chord; he finds chords within chords and combines rhythm and solo ideas throughout the course of each song. Plus his sound is totally clean and unforgiving to flubbed notes, very disciplined. And as much as Hayward is linked to his Verlaine/Reed influences, Deebank's style is often compared to the later work of Johnny Marr who played with a similar restlessness of ideas and combination of pop, folky, and classical approaches. The instrumentals that dominate The Splendour of Fear are impressive from a guitar players' standpoint, but they don't necessarily make riveting listening in and of themselves. The lengthy vocal cut "Stangnant Pool" is cool, though, kinda moody and dark. Hayward's lyrics are always strong, full of intriguing poetic imagery that nevertheless doesn't sound forced. It's a good sign when you don't notice the "poetic" style of a lyric until you look for it; lyrics should sound natural and not as if they were transfered directly from a spiral notebook. I made the mistake of reading more reviews of these records while listening to them, and my suggestible nature had me beginning to fall into line with the prevailing opinion, but I have to trust my first impressions. The thinner production definitely hurts these records, and I don't think the songs are as striking as some of what came later in Felt's career, but these are very individual works which stood apart from much of what was going on at the time. I'll have to check out the records that came after this batch to see what further refinements there were to the Felt sound, but I am definitely intrigued, if not knocked out.