80s Cup R8M14- Ranking Ted 16-6 DD

[Penk!]

A

Felt - Primitive Painters



B

Colourfield - Castles in the Air

[Rayge]

Always loved Felt. Am I the only one who thinks they were named after the past tense of feel rather than the fabric. This is one of their best numbers, too.
Colourfield were another band I liked, but nothing like as much.
A

[Dayodead]

A

[The Modernist]

A has always been a shining, luminous highlight of not only Felt's career but 80s indie in general. Deebank's mesmerising web of sound creates the perfect setting for the soaring chorus to emerge with Elizabeth Frazer providing a welcome counterpoint to the non-vocals of Lawrence. Love it. Excellent pick.

B is a pretty decent too, Terry Hall intoning a Gallic sounding melody ( I can kinda imagine Charles Aznavour singing it or something). It's light and charming, though, to my ears, not particularly powerful.

A

[Polishgirl]

I was all ready to vote A because it's a good tune enhanced by Elizabeth Fraser's vocal. BUT I somehow became distracted by pictures of a young Terry Hall, and then he sang to me about being lonely and now I have no choice but to vote

B

[toomanyhatz]

I'm glad that Felt is so influenced by Tom Verlaine's guitar playing and arranging; he's a positive influence on a lot of 80s music. As a vocal influence? Not so much. Also, Verlaine's way of drawing endless variations out of simple source material is not usually this far beyond them; this meanders quite a bit.

Colourfield not powerful? Imagine!

Nonetheless G is right about B having a winning melody, in fact it wins me over, as does the singing, as does the acoustic guitar sound, as does (stop me if you've heard this one before) the fact that it doesn't linger any longer than necessary. Not a fan, generally, but if there are others like this I might be forced to reevaluate.

[Jumper K]

A.

[Belle Lettre]

A

[Purgatory Brite]

B

[Diamond Dog]

I like A well enough, but it's fairly unremarkable.

B is a beautiful melody and I love that middle eight guitar break.

[The Write Profile]

I love everything about A. I love the crystalline guitar sound, I love the sense of reach and expanse and I especially love Liz Fraser's skyscraping vocals.

A,

[Darkness_Fish]

Not sure what to make of A, it's a bit of a blancmange of keyboard and guitar morass. It all swirls around a particularly poor vocal, until the Cocteau Twinge of class is added to the chorus. But they don't make enough of her vocals, and make too much of the other bloke. It all feels like a lot of effort to make this kind of non-song. Blurs into a bit of a mess.

Ooh, there's a bit of pretension here, is it Jacques Brel, or is it Peter Sarstedt? Wouldn't have known this was Terry Hall if no-one had mentioned it, it doesn't sound like him, I'm much more used to him being lower in the mix, and sounding fed-up and disinterested. It's covered in cheese, but it seems to be pulling through, and just doing more than A for me.

B

[echolalia]

A good tie - neither deserves to lose.

B

[Deebank]

Hatz'z predictable Verlaine reference is interesting - for a change - because Primitive Painters was Maurice Deebank's song, handed as a complete piece to Lawrence. And it was Lawrence who was the big Television fan - Deebank had never heard them IIRC. Perhaps some of the love rubbed off after working together for five years or so.

Whatever, it was the first Felt tune I ever heard - on Peel's Festive Fifty - which goes to show maybe how much bigger they'd have been if JP had actually played their stuff on his regular shows. He wasn't convinced.

It suffers from Robin Guthrie's production a bit (not as much as some of Ignite the Seven Cannons though) - it was recently re-released with a cleaner finish on a lot of the Guthrie-ised tracks - but sadly not Primitive Painters.

For me, something like The Day the Rain Came Down (of the same LP) or Stained Glass Windows in the Sky would have been better. But still a classic.

The Colorfield tune is alright I suppose - nothing special.

A

[WG Kaspar]

A

[Loki]

[The Modernist]

.

Whatever, it was the first Felt tune I ever heard - on Peel's Festive Fifty - which goes to show maybe how much bigger they'd have been if JP had actually played their stuff on his regular shows. He wasn't convinced.

Interesting point. They went a bit under the radar with me at the time, perhaps that's one of the reasons why.

[Deebank]

.

Whatever, it was the first Felt tune I ever heard - on Peel's Festive Fifty - which goes to show maybe how much bigger they'd have been if JP had actually played their stuff on his regular shows. He wasn't convinced.

Interesting point. They went a bit under the radar with me at the time, perhaps that's one of the reasons why.

They weren't really championed in the NME either - and Peel and the NME (plus Andy Kershaw and a couple of other DJs to a lesser extent) were the main conduits for 'alternative' music at the time. I think they got more coverage in Melody Maker but I rarely read it.

This is funny - Lawrence and Peter Astor (of 80s cup faves The Weather Prophets) have a chat about exactly this:

[never/ever]

A

[trans-chigley express]

A was very lush with that lovely 12 string guitar sound and Fraser's vocals really added something special to it.

B was a nice tango-flavoured tune and nice use of castanets for a bit of a flamenco feel.

Two new discoveries that I enjoyed but A just has the edge.