FELT (Go Kart Mozart, Denim)... Lawrence is amazing!

I saw Lawrence Of Belgravia last month (and met the man himself!) and massively enjoyed it. Felt and Denim content is less to the fore (no archive footage whatsoever), much of the film chronicles Lawrence's period from what was probably his lowest ebb of being evicted from his old flat (though nothing I recall that goes into detail about him being homeless, beyond the obvious allusion to him having bunked at Pete Astor's house) to being rehoused in a new council flat. There's a lot of GKM interview and rehearsal footage and what can only be staged recording sessions for 'On The Hot Dog Streets', featuring several songs from 'Denim Take Over' (the album title comes from the opening line of 'West Brom Blues'). I'd recommend any fan of his to check it out, even those that throw a sulk at the mention of anything post-Felt. You just ought to.

I have mp3s of 'Glitter all Over' and GKM's 'Talk Like Noddy' should anyone want them posted. I'm after 'Novelty Rock (Kid's Portion)' to complete my collection, beyond finding affordable physical copies of Back In Denim and Novelty Rock itself, of course.

I really liked the movie and given that I don't own any of dude's albums or have much investment in him in any way I guess it passes an objectivity test

the director was there to do a Q&A (it was a film festival thingy) and I always scarper before I can get sucked into those things, but I was actually interested in enough of the movie's construction to ask him some stuff - eg the fact that it spans like eight years but you can hardly ever tell whether it's 2003 or 2010 or whatever

(this goes some way to getting across how Lawrence has spent this whole time kind of dropping in and out of life)

http://thequietus.com/articles/07757-lawrence-interview-felt-lawrence-of-belgravia

the book arrived. it's pretty sweet. is anyone going to the rough trade thing? what's that about then? getting a bunch of gamey old codgers together to play records & talk about their glory days doesn't sound very lawrence. is deebank supposed to be going? is it going to be like classicalindie trisha?

Reports at the Felt Tribute site forum.

Some video.

Finally!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-The-Hot-Dog-Streets/dp/B007R2X6LE

Didn't think "Denim Take Over" (the song) would ever see the light of day, but looks like it's be revived as "Lawrence Takes Over." Actually, I think all the remaining Denim Take Over songs are here (assuming "The Sun" is "Island in the Sun"). Plus 9 new songs! So excited.

Amazing news. I'm so ready for this album.

will be buying this on cd and lp. would buy it on tape and 8-track too.

will have to find the most reliable u.s. source for this. i want perfectly perfect copies as soon as i can get them.

I Talk With Robot Voice is fantastic. Wonder why he's reusing a bunch of songs from Denim Take Over, though.

New single is available on itunes right now. It's New World In The Morning which was the single he put out for Record Store Day, really wish I'd got a copy of that.

So great to have him back.

Felt feature in this month's Mojo

very excited. saw lawrence of belgravia the other night and all the bits and bobs from the hotdog streets sounded sensational. lawrence's q and a bit afterwards was great fun too. he said his dream with felt was to make people cry, he said his vision was of people leaving felt concerts in floods of tears. which i suspect would have been realised by lawrence of belgravia, had the bleeding projectionist not killed the film 2 minutes before the end, which did rather disarmed the emotional wallop. oh well. it is a very funny film.

I'm interested to hear the new album but it feels like he is drying up creatively. There's his Felt period where they released approx an album each year plus singles for a decade. Then the run of albums from Back In Denim (1992) to Instant Wigwam and Igloo Mixture (1999) is four proper albums (one double) over 7 years, plus one unreleased album. Those records are all 100% amazing and all show an impressive progression, building on and changing what went before. By my count that's more than 60 songs that he wrote and recorded over this time, even if you exclude squiggly little instrumental bits etc.

In the 13 years since then, he's released one album, which used a hefty amount of material written in the 90s, and which was (IMHO) a regression from Instant Wigwam. It failed to impress a strong identity as a album like the previous ones did, and used many of the same tricks and ideas from Instant Wigwam and Novelty Rock but in a less creative way. And now another album of 9 new songs and the rest written a decade and a half ago.

I've been with his a long time and it's never felt like he's tremendously prolific but for me, the news that this new album has so much old stuff on it is a bit of a downer.

i'm just happy he does anything at all. he doesn't have to do anything at all. i like it all. probably the only musician i've been listening to for years that i am even excited about. as far as new material goes. though i was happy to get the latest mark robinson album in the mail last week...

Okay fair enough, we have numerous fantastic albums of yore to enjoy. But would you agree that Tearing Up The Album Charts not one of his greatest acheivements? Three or four excellent tracks but not a great album. I feel like this new one is going to be Tearing Up The Album Charts vol 2.

its true i didn't listen to the last one as much as i listened to instant wigwam, but its still a really funny record! and singular and totally him and i'm really glad i have it.

He said in the Mark Radcliffe interview from a few days ago that this and the mini-LP are to clear up all the GKM material and I'm assuming the entire 'novelty' period. It's not too surprising he hasn't been as prolific considering what he's been through since the late 90s.

His next project, the mysterious, dark 'singer-songwriter' thing that's being whispered about - containing lyrics written while sleeping rough - can only be interesting, should it materialise.

I doubt he has the desire or the balls to release a dark singer-songwriter thing. Unless it is actually a pisstake.

i mean if you want to talk about diminishing returns, we can talk about almost everyone else i was listening to in the 80's who wasn't lawrence.

I prefer if the people I like keep releasing stuff regularly, even if the quality is uneven. Almost everyone who waits 5 years or more between releases has lost the plot and it usually shows.

xxpost He's been mentioning it occasionally in radio interviews and Q&As recently. He said it won't emerge if the new GKM is "a hit".

He's been cagey about exactly what it will entail, but said people will be likely to "reference Felt"

nah i believe in the post novelty rock / reflective album, he was talking about it on monday, he claims he has all the songs written.

i dunno, the bits from the film suggest a denim on ice style opus, more ambitous than the last one, i have high hopes for it & there's mini lp out straight after . i think the lack of activity has to do with other factors than creative aridity.

plus, tearing up the album charts is a bit of a stunner on the quiet, maybe not as much of an jaw dropping experience as wigwam, but in terms of the sharpness of the songs i think it surpasses it. donna and the dope fiends! electric rock and roll! transgressions!

i don't think the likelihood of lawrence creating a great record has anything to do with his grasp on the plot...

"the plot" for him has usually been to create an album with a specific concept, a feel, a unified package with the songs sharing some important common elements, sounds, themes etc. To write songs that complement the specific and unique group of musicians that are brought together to record the album. And to package it accordingly.

The problem with the last album was that it felt like a random collection of songs that collectively had no identity. Packaging was nothing special either.

hmm yeah i dunno i feel like this record promises to be properly odd, uncomfortable, obtuse & a bit like brumburger on a budget, i think the lack or resources kindof forces lawrence in on himself.

in terms of recycling denim take over (which i've never heard!) he has always insisted that he would never waste a song. plus the older songs on the last one were in no way the best. but yeah the overarching concept wasn't there.

Yeah since I was think that out loud, he's gone on the record explaining upcoming releases will be clearing the decks for this particular 'novelty' era, so it kind of makes sense.... Though at the time I was watching the film, it was confusing to see him pretending to record songs which had been recorded in the late 90s.

I wonder where Denim ends and GKM really begins, though. Probably seeing Denim as the 'major label' band and GKM as the 'b-side band'. The Denim take over stuff is definitely closer to Denim On Ice than Novelty Rock or Instant Igloo, though. 'The Sun' sounded very polished (with some new overdubs) on Mark Radcliffe's show the other day. Songwriting-wise, not too removed from a certain kind of Felt pop sound, either.

*thinking

I should wait and hear the new one before getting too judgemental I guess. For artists like Laurence, albums have always been more than just a collection of tracks and since we are now in this post-album world, that again may be a problem with Tearing Up The Album Charts. It's the only one of his albums which I do not own a physical copy of. I've never seen the real cover. I've probably only listened to it straight through once or twice.

Then the run of albums from Back In Denim (1992) to Instant Wigwam and Igloo Mixture (1999) is four proper albums (one double) over 7 years

more like 10 years. back in denim was at least a couple of years in the making before it's final release. not that this changes your point you're making.

I'm so surprised people seem to prefer Instant Wigwam to Tearing Up The Charts. Always thought Wigwam was like a bunch of novelty B-sides with a few proper songs thrown in, kind of exactly like Novelty Rock. We're Selfish Lazy & Greedy, Here is a Song and Mrs. Back to Front are the only songs I really go back to on there. Tearing Up felt more like a real album to me with some of his best songwriting. Glorious Chorus, Listening to Marmalade and City Centre are up there with his best. The only track that seems a bit throwaway is Building Site and that's just too much fun.

plenty of treasure on both albums. i listened to Tearing Up tons when i bought it, but for some reason i do go back to wigwam more often. i think they compliment each other nicely though.

Did you preorder the new album already Scott? Limited signed vinyl copies available.

http://www.cherryred.co.uk/westmidlands-exd.asp?id=3681

Kitchen, you don't like Sailor Boy? I'm not a huge Go Kart Mozart person, but that song is unmatchable

Anyways, I guess there has been talk of him doing a singer-songwriter project forever. It was supposed to be his "Berlin". I guess the story is that in the late nineties Alan McGee wanted to put out a record by him, but only if it was in that mold as opposed to the novelty stuff.

I think it could be really amazing to hear him working in that particular idiom once again, but hoping that it would be more like Poem of the River-era Felt as opposed to some of the serious songs on Denim on Ice eg Don't Bite Too Much Out of the Apple, Myriad of Hoops

has this been posted here? it's so good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_bO-NcuMBw

"two drummers and a couple of sax/ i think he's headed for the cut-price racks"

So this isn't supposed to be out till June 25th but I just noticed Amazon.com are already selling it. Anyone ordered it yet?

http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Dog-Streets-Kart-Mozart/dp/B007R2X6LE/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1339685465&sr=1-1

Six of the listed songs are on "Denim takes over", you know.

There's some discussion about that upthread ;)

Oops, sorry! I'm recycling like Lawrence :)

xxp eight

ah, I figure after never really repeating himself with Felt he deserves to be cut a bit of slack in his dotage...

The only songs I've heard from Denim Take Over are the title track and the ones that ended up on Tearing Up The Album Chart so to me this is like a whole new album. Wonder if he still plans to release that mini album in a few months too?

I heard it was shelved.

Got my copy (from Amazon) a few days ago. New overdubs (and in some cases new lyrics) and better quality mean the Denim Take Over songs sound a lot more vital here. And the non-DTO songs kick ass too, especially White Stilettos in the Sand, Spunky Axe, and Electrosex. Whoever said upthread that they were expecting this to be more of a Denim on Ice-style epic was right on. It's funny, before I heard it, I was thinking I didn't draw much of a line between GKM and Denim (post-Back in Denim, anyway), but this definitely feels more like a Denim album. Much bigger sound than either of the previous GKM records.

Album of the year

Only played this a couple of times, have to say I'm a bit disappointed. Something about the production that is a little messy in places. I thought this would be Denim On Ice part two but the songs are lacking something. Really hope this is a grower, those first two Denim albums are two of my favourite albums ever.

Ah yeah, those are two of the best albums ever, so I'm not really surprised this isn't quite at their level. But as much as I like the other GKM albums, I'm really appreciating the grandiosity of this one. Can see what you mean about some of the production messiness, but the songs are there imo.

I think after all the waiting I was expecting a bit more from the album. I have no doubt it will grow on me but I'm pretty sure all the Denim and GKM albums were really instant with me. It is really nice to have him back though, can't believe it's been seven years since the last album.