Felt - England's Lost Pop Stars

A strange-looking figure wanders the streets of London, mumbling in a thick brummie accent and proudly flaunting his look of a suburban tramp. Two greasy locks of hair fall from under his baseball cap, while his ageless face betrays a beauty from long ago, now worn away. It's Lawrence (yes, no surname. It's apparently Hayward, but no one's quite sure), former frontman of Felt, though to look at him you'd think he was a drunk scraping coins off the pavement while waiting for his unemployment check. He keeps to himself, with the never-dying hope that his latest work ("On The Hot Dog Streets", released as Go-Kart Mozart) will be the one, the one that finally makes him famous. Pathetic, isn't it? And yet it wasn't always like this. This odd character was once not a misfit but a promising rock pretty boy, blessed with immense talent and a formidable pen. His art, unknown to the general public, has changed the lives of countless musicians over the last two decades, through his music and - above all - his lyrics. But fortune has never been on his side, and his uncompromising character and provocative attitude have done everything possible to squander the precious few chances he had to leap from great underground artist to great pop star. All the glowing reviews, the collaborations, the endorsements and the praise from fellow musicians have been in vain: Lawrence's self-sabotaging nature has relegated him to cult status among the few, turning him into an indie-rock hermit, far from the spotlight and ignored by the masses, even though his plans were meant to go very differently. What follows is his deeply melancholy story.

I'd be the brightest star you heard - the story of Felt

In the Seventies, Lawrence (born 1961), a teenager from Birmingham, devoured pop music in his bedroom. The glam rock of T Rex, Gary Glitter and Lou Reed fired him up and fed his dream of one day entering rock mythology himself. Like many kids of his generation, his life was upended by the explosion of punk and new wave. Watching punk bands play on Marc Bolan's TV show made him realize that you could form a band without being a skilled musician. Those were years of intense creative ferment, when music changed shape within a few months, and the constant churn of trends consigned the past to oblivion; the music of just a few years earlier, and the image of rock musicians as pop-culture stars, was being cut down to size, as young Lawrence noticed at gigs by his favourite post-punk bands. His main inspiration, though, came from Tom Verlaine and the album "Marquee Moon" by his Television, discovered at 16 and never set aside since. The New Yorker's off-key, monotone singing (his other idol would be Lou Reed), his chiming guitar strokes, but above all his decadent lyrics shaped young Lawrence's musical vision: he picked up his first guitar and shortly after recorded his first single under the name Felt - a name paying tribute to the refrain "How we feeeelt..." from Television's "Venus".

It's called "Index" and sounds exactly as you'd expect from the scrawl of an eighteen-year-old who can barely do more than abuse his guitar, mumbling over a beat that's barely perceptible. It's dreadful, but the press of the time was so starved for novelty that "Index" ended up being crowned single of the week in Sounds. Things changed radically once Lawrence formed a proper band, with himself as the central figure. He wrote the lyrics, co-wrote the music, oversaw the artwork and decided who to hire and fire, in a manner that was anything but democratic and often had no rational basis whatsoever (someone was once kicked out of the band for having hair that was too curly!). Soon after, young guitarist Maurice Deebank, who'd also grown up in the same Birmingham suburb, completed the band's first lineup. A classically trained guitarist, Deebank was a precocious talent, and his sophisticated technique, alien to most of his new-wave peers, bewitched Lawrence (at the time a clumsy self-taught player), who saw in him the perfect vehicle for his lyrical gifts. Deebank's favourite band were Yes, but Lawrence kept begging him never to admit it in any interview: "If you say that out loud, we're finished!" Different times. The two co-wrote every Felt song up until 1985, with only rare exceptions.

The second single, "Something Sends Me To Sleep", released on the legendary Cherry Red Records, corrects course. It's narcotized guitar pop steeped in strong Reed-like hues: the hurricane of random chords of "Index" turns into a catchy, tuneful jingle-jangle number with a seductive chorus, anticipating the miniature Velvet-style psychedelia of Ultra Vivid Scene.

In 1982, Felt released the first of their ten albums. Legend has it that the eccentric Lawrence had secretly planned to release ten albums and ten singles over ten years, and then break up the band. The title he chose was Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty, an early taste of his love for grandiose, enigmatic titles. Though brief and raw, the record contains all the aesthetic and magic of the band, starting with the artwork, an extreme close-up, in black and white, of a portion of Lawrence's angelic face, his eye staring straight at the viewer. The six tracks seethe with an entirely original alchemy, already defining the sound of early Felt: wave drumming rigorously devoid of cymbals, in the style of "Peter Gabriel III", a nasal, Reed-like voice halfway between speech and song, and two guitars alternating in crystalline, high-pitched tones. While the sound was in keeping with the aesthetic of early new wave (vast spaces between instruments, a mix pushed toward the high frequencies etc.), the melodies were something wholly unique and never heard before. To Lawrence's simple strummed chords are added Deebank's elaborate scales, which weave through the verses, breaking up the songs' continuum.

"Fortune", the band's manifesto, is a possessed litany broken up by brief guitar solos of endless melancholy. They would record a crisper, better-produced version that finally does justice to the melody's beauty; it would come out as the b-side of a single. "Birdmen" conjures a psychedelic trance, the guitar rearing up over a spiral of notes atop a tribal drum loop. "Cathedral" extends a hand toward wave as we know it, but the hammering drone of the rhythm guitar, looping two repeated chords, betrays the quartet's psychedelic intentions.

Two releases change the game: the singles "My Face Is on Fire/Trails of Colour Dissolve" and "Penelope Tree". The acoustic "My Face Is On Fire", Lawrence's work alone, is their first song built on western-style melodies. The lyrics, full of disorienting images (desert mirages?), are among the finest examples of Lawrence the songwriter. It would later be re-recorded with Deebank (who is credited on the original regardless) and renamed "Whirlpool Vision of Shame". The b-side is also worth noting, following in the footsteps of the hooks of "Something Sends to Sleep", adding skittering percussion and killer choruses. "Penelope Tree" takes the final step: with the addition of backing vocals, Felt are finally a pop band in every sense. Both singles appear on the two volumes of Cherry Red's legendary compilation "Pillows & Prayers".

With The Splendour of Fear (1984), the air already feels different. The production is lush, epic and spacious. The drums thunder like a parade of military drums, the guitars sound round and crystalline, as you'd expect from a top-notch jangle-pop record, where before they were thin and angular. The arrangements are more varied, alternating acoustic rhythm guitar with electric lead, Deebank's fingers fluttering up and down the instrument's high frets. Even the simple chords of the debut are set aside in favour of gentle arpeggios. Lawrence himself admitted that at the time of the debut he was a beginner who struggled to play.

It's immediately clear that, by their second album, Felt had already shed the cumbersome weight of their influences, playing music that no one before them had conceived. The sounds can be filed under new wave, but the melodies and structures deserve a discussion of their own. The six-track running order is in fact two-thirds instrumentals with a solemn gait. Drummer Gary Ainge's muffled beat, focused on the toms and kettle drum, lends a strong martial drive, while Deebank has all the room he needs to indulge in his phrasing, painting cinematic landscapes and scenes (another six-string master made such "descriptive" rock: Hank Marvin of The Shadows).

The opener "Red Indians" starts off ghostly, with a mantra of two guitars chiming in 6/8; the piece closes on the same theme after a meditative melody emerges. "Mexican Bandits", another instrumental, is itself an instrumental mantra. The true masterpieces, however, are the two actual songs. "The World Is As Soft As Lace", a prototype for Felt to come, is tinged with folk, its sweet electric phrasing almost distracting from some of Lawrence's finest lines ("I'd be the brightest star you heard / We'd be the softest lace on earth"). The eight minutes of "The Stagnant Pool" dominate the record. The track is a monstre built on a progression of three simple chords. An opening section sung in an austere, sepulchral tone soon gives way to an extremely long jam of chiming curls of notes, icy arpeggios, small riffs and harmonics of piercing melancholy. Low, ten years later, would borrow this very format for their "Lullaby". The lyrics are romanticism in its purest form and would deserve proper study, such is the power of the images used to express utter stillness and powerlessness. An excerpt: “The stagnant pool/ Like a drowned coffin/ Still as a deceased heart/ Haunting the ghost of the noble crusader/ Who recalls pellucid ice/ Clutching the aching twigs/ Never a drop to disturb stagnation”.

Two instrumentals round off the tracklist, one written by Lawrence and the other, intricate and solo-guitar only, by Deebank, as one would expect.

The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories (1984) contains both songs and instrumentals, but leans toward the former, while the latter take the form of brief, solo-guitar sketches penned by Deebank, rather than full-band compositions.

The idea was to make an album of immediate pop songs that respected song form, playing on the contrast between Lawrence's flat, deadpan voice and the richly layered instrumental arrangements surrounding it. Brazenly upbeat and sunny in its music, yet melancholic and reflective in its lyrics, The Strange Idols Pattern is an indie-pop masterpiece through and through, blooming with acoustic guitars, skipping rhythms and achingly sweet arpeggiated figures. The open, bright sound is thanks to producer John Leckie (Bill Nelson, The Fall, Stone Roses...). What makes it shine above the hordes of bands to come is Deebank's mastery, the Steve Howe of indie-pop, bursting with inspiration and a wealth of tricks and licks drawn from his classical training and Spanish guitar background (just listen to "Crucifix Heaven", for solo classical guitar).

The single "Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow" is a statement of intent: a jangle-pop riff, a mighty 80s snare roll, cascades of high-pitched guitar notes, a simple melodic solo - isn't this basically the blueprint for late-decade indie-pop? The single version, heavily arranged with female backing vocals, is more shamelessly pop and eighties, a stone's throw from bands like the Lotus Eaters.

"Roman Litter" and "Spanish House" follow the same blueprint, but the best material comes in the second half of the record, with more enigmatic tracks steeped in disorienting atmospheres. The Morricone-esque "Vasco Da Gama", with an anthology-worthy intro in pure jingle-jangle style, features a more austere-than-ever Lawrence intoning venom-laced lyrics without ever losing his composure. "Crystal Ball" unspools over three minutes of Byrdsian tangles, with Deebank dishing out riff after riff in an unbroken stream; once again, the sweetly melancholic music distracts from lyrics heavy with pessimism about human relationships and from a scornful, ambiguous vocal delivery.

Despite greater concessions to the mainstream compared to earlier work (poppier drumming, more conventional song structures, airier melodies...), The Strange Idols Pattern wouldn't send Felt into the charts. Difficulties touring and their failure to align with any dominant scene kept them confined to the underground, even though word of their music had already reached the attentive ears of some illustrious peers, and Lawrence's lyrics had helped build an aura of mystery around his strange persona as songwriter and introverted poet.

By this point, Felt seemed almost like an underground version of the Smiths. Along with them and a handful of others, they were among the very first to codify what would become contemporary guitar-driven indie-pop, and not by coincidence. The elusive, indecipherable and eccentric Lawrence was an inverted Morrissey, utterly removed from the histrionics and explicit adolescent poetics of the Manchester gobshite. Deebank, the Marr of the outfit, was instead a virtuoso with an austere, technical touch, a guitarist with a progressive-rock discipline who'd landed among the punks, whereas Marr seemed to channel his emotions through the guitar with utter candour. Anyone watching a Felt gig would sense no trace of star power, since the band's poses were introverted but never showy. Lawrence's character was far too snobbish to let other kids of his generation turn him into an icon, not to mention the enigmatic nature of his lyrics, hard to parse on the fly even for a native speaker.

1984 is also the year of Deebank's sole solo album. Inner Thought Zone lays bare progressive, new age and classical influences. Long mocked by Lawrence, it's actually a solid instrumental rock record, complementary to the work of Cocteau Twins, Durutti Column and Dif Juz.

1985 would prove a pivotal year for the band. The lineup changes (Thomas Marco becomes the new bassist) and Lawrence decides to expand the group by bringing in another guitarist. While putting up a flyer in a record shop in town, a customer steps forward and says, "I know a keyboard player. He's sixteen and just finished school. He's a genius." The genius's name is Martin Duffy, a keyboard prodigy. The blend of the warm, luminous tones of his Hammond organ with the icy, crystalline sound of Deebank's guitar would become the sound of the new Felt. It fell to Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie, producing the new album, to forge the perfect mixture.

Ignite The Seven Cannons came out in 1985 and is a more accessible record. It would be carried by Felt's only hit, "Primitive Painters", a manifesto of their new direction, which was given a video (or rather, "half a video", as Lawrence would admit). Preceded by a waltz of solemn harmonics that opens into a miniature of organ and acoustic guitar, the song explodes into a blaze of pure light. "I just wish my life could be/ As strange as a conspiracy", Lawrence's finest rhyme, is just the start of a mantra of mounting intensity, culminating in a two-voice chorus: a more frenzied-than-usual Lawrence and an Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins) rapt by some transcendent force. It's one of those songs that could go on forever, with the arrangement building in intensity until it burns itself out - note Lawrence's second vocal line in the closing section, which heightens its power.

The record's assets don't stop there: the instrumentals are genuine western-style rides that revive the spirit of the band's early work. The songs are less successful this time around, partly due to the watered-down mix, but at least "The Day The Rain Came Down" stands alongside their classics.

Deebank, dissatisfied with Guthrie's production, lost interest in the project. He would soon marry a Spanish girl he'd met at a gig in Barcelona, and only took part marginally in the recording of the mini-album Ballad Of The Band, Felt's first release for Alan McGee's Creation Records.

The title track captures a snapshot of the state of the relationship between the singer and the guitarist: “Where were you/ When we wanted to work/ You were still in bed/ You’re a total jerk […] Ain’t got no money/ Ain’t got no fame/ And that’s why I feel like giving in”. Deebank, never one to pay attention to the frontman's bizarre lyrics, recorded the song without realising he was its "jerk"; needless to say, it was his last contribution to the band.

Despite the venomous lyrics, Ballad Of The Band ushers in the world of the new Felt: catchy organ riffs, simple chord progressions and instantly gripping choruses, with the guitars never too prominent. The early Charlatans owe their very existence to this track, from which their "White Shirt" borrows more than one idea.

The mini-album also previews another new direction for the band, this time a more subterranean one: the ambient-pop and new age vein of which the B-side offers a taste. "Candles In A Church" (Lawrence), and the more intricate "Ferdinand Magellan" (Duffy), are touching piano sonatas.

In 1986 the band was at the peak of its fame and could afford to release a modest instrumental mini-album, Let The Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death, before putting out their most acclaimed record, Forever Breathes The Lonely Word.

The album positions itself as the start of a new era for the band, with cover art that echoes their debut, only this time the close-up is of the cherubic keyboardist Martin Duffy, underscoring the shift in lineup and instrumentation. It's one of Creation's classics, and, confirming the pop turn taken by Ballad Of The Band, it would exert a strong underground influence on the following decade's indie scene. Gone are the instrumentals, gone the guitar flourishes: this incarnation of Felt's music is a gust of fresh spring air dominated by luminous swirls of organ.

"Down But Not Yet Out" is pure jangle pop played to perfection and embellished with radiant Hammond riffs. "September Lady", so crystalline it sounds almost liturgical, sheds the cumbersome ghost of Deebank, unfolding into meticulous arpeggios and rediscovering delightful Morricone-esque touches. "Grey Streets", unusually intricate and teeming with notes and shifts, is psychedelia in the vein of Julian Cope that takes an unexpected prog turn: it all hinges on Duffy's virtuosity, as he scales the steepest runs without ever sacrificing the songs' lightness and melodic hooks. The bass, too, is more fluid and harmonic, finally freed from post-punk's jerky picking (on "Gather Up Your Wings And Fly" it even indulges in a closing mini-jam with the keyboard).

More in line with Creation's typical 1980s style (The Loft, Jasmine Minks...), "All The People I Like Are Those That Are Dead" is actually one of Lawrence's bleakest tracks: “Maybe I should entertain/ The very fact that I’m insane/ I wasn’t fooling when I said/ All the people I like are those that are dead”.

Common wisdom holds that this second phase of Felt was the product of the partnership between Lawrence and Martin Duffy, but the contribution of the other sidemen is often underrated. New guitarist Tony Wille has a more vibrant, country-inflected touch than Deebank, and is also sparser with his notes. His guitar is prominent on every track: he builds harmonies, weaves arpeggios and plays small lead lines (listen to the fingerstyle acoustic arrangement of the mournful "A Wave Crashed on Rocks"). The same goes for Marco Thomas's bass, which, by contrast, moves around more than in the past, playing more agile and full-bodied lines.

Every year brought a gradual shift in direction for Felt. In 1987, buoyed by Tony Wille's country-folk touch — he and Lawrence shared a love of Nick Drake's music — they released their most acoustic material yet. Aside from the psychedelic garage of the opening track "Declaration", Poem Of The River is in fact their softest, most autumnal record. The making of the album was more troubled than ever: the producer would often leave the sessions, leaving his inexperienced teenage son at the mixing desk. The result was so dreadful that Robin Guthrie offered to fix the tapes, but only on condition that he not be credited. The sound is indeed thinner than usual, but in terms of melody, Poem Of The River is in all likelihood the most gorgeous thing Lawrence ever wrote in any of his incarnations, and it shows real musical maturity and total cohesion among the band's musicians.

"She Lives By The Castle", an indie-pop marvel, is built around car rides with Lawrence's ex-girlfriend, Sarah Cocknell (future singer of St. Etienne), who at the time lived near Windsor Castle. The tiptoeing vocals, the drums barely brushing the cymbals, the sweet acoustic guitar line and the round bass set the stage for one of Duffy's finest solos. The radiant melody of "Dark Red Birds" ties into West Coast psychedelia, but the keyboardist's shimmering notes and Lawrence's sleepy murmur once again distract from a twilight lyric about death. "Silver Plane" and "Stained-Glass Windows In The Sky" broaden the band's range of influences, drawing on a pop classicism alien to most of their indie contemporaries.

"Riding On The Equator" stands as one of Felt's grandest creations: a sprawling track that swells and relaxes over nine minutes like a sacred-music jam, but with a tone that's lighter and more lulling than ever. The second half of the song is given over to the longest, most beautiful guitar solo in all of indie-pop, a gentle glide of notes that punctuate the track's coda like brushstrokes on a painting. It recalls "The Stagnant Pool", but instead of the suicidal mood and icy sounds of that 1984 masterpiece, here we get warm tones and a knowing, laid-back swagger.

The EP The Final Resting Of The Ark is once again an experimental companion piece to the album, with the title track starting out as a psychedelic ballad before dissolving into a haze of transcendental guitar lines and sax. The remaining tracks are instrumentals produced by Robin Guthrie, all with a distinct space-folk flavour.

One step away from achieving the fame he'd long craved, Lawrence pulls off one of the most spectacular commercial suicides in music history. On the morning before a crucial show, with a number of talent scouts in the audience, he drops acid. Onstage, he can't handle the lights or the crowd, cuts off his bandmates after just a few seconds, and sends the audience home, telling them to get their money back.

It's entirely possible he did it on purpose, wanting to scorch the earth around his own band. After all, as should be clear by now, Lawrence is no ordinary person, and over the years journalists and colleagues have spread anecdote after anecdote about his lucid madness. Obsessed with youth, anorexic thinness and cleanliness, Lawrence won't eat vegetables or cheese and won't let anyone use his bathroom. There's also a story about an extremely long car journey, driven entirely in first gear, to reach the venue where they were due to play. There's no way of knowing how many of these stories are true and how many are invention — Lawrence has never denied any of them; the fact remains that the band's mythology has also been inflated by the leader's stature as an outsider genius. "There are a lot of rumours about what I have and haven't done. I've never said any of it was true or false, I've never admitted to anything," Lawrence states, with total honesty.

All the admiration from fellow musicians, critics and a loyal core of fans was never enough to get them into the charts, despite the fleeting success of "Primitive Painters" and despite glowing reviews in the indie press.

There's no shortage of Felt admirers who, over the years, have never hidden their love for the band: Charlatans, Bobby Gillespie, Kevin Shields, Belle And Sebastian, Brett Anderson, Girls, Real Estate, St. Etienne and Manic Street Preachers. The latter paid tribute with a cover of "Primitive Painters", though unfortunately too recently for it to have had much influence.

In their final two years of existence (remember, Felt were conceived to last exactly ten years!), Lawrence, resigned to making records for the pleasure of his die-hard fans, refines and reworks his formula, while still allowing himself the odd extravagance, provocation and misstep. The Pictorial Jackson Review (1988) is a 32-minute LP with a B-side that's entirely instrumental.

The first side gives the Creation-era indie-pop sound a more singer-songwriter-ish push, and "Ivory Past" nails one of their finest choruses. The remaining tracks suffer from a lack of the meticulous instrumental embroidery, and the mix of Lawrence's wordiness and strummed chords gives the impression of a poor man's Bob Dylan. The instrumental side fares better (two tracks, one of which runs to 12 minutes), featuring a deeply melancholic solo-piano ambient piece, "Sending Lady Load" (the only track credited solely to Duffy), and a kind of unsettling séance, "The Darkest Ending".

Duffy would go on to record a glossy instrumental jazz album, Train Above The City, on which Lawrence's contribution was limited to the song titles. A provocation? An attempt to mock the fans? It's hardly surprising these guys never broke through.

The single "Space Blues", also from 1988, is gorgeous. John Lockie returns to produce, and the sound turns modern, warm and vivid: "Space Blues" is a syrupy, vibrant slice of soul (the sax is played by Richard Thomas of Dif Juz), while "Be Still" is an ambient-pop meditation with a transcendental horn arrangement worthy of David Sylvian's "Brilliant Trees" era. "Tuesday's Secret" returns to the guitar sound of "Strange Idols Pattern" and the early pop singles, with an arpeggiated twelve-string tracing Byrds-like figures (the slightly off-kilter solo that creeps in quietly is gorgeous) and a blazingly luminous chorus that gives off incalculable energy. It wouldn't have been out of place on the debut of labelmates Primal Scream.

Me And A Monkey On The Moon (1989) would be their final LP, and once again a record ahead of its time, anticipating future indie-pop trends. It came out on él Records, the label emblematic of the sweetest, most arty strain of indie-pop, founded by the boss of Cherry Red. It's a more mature, more fully realised record than its predecessor, full of pastel-coloured ballads that brazenly reference pre-punk models that were by no means fashionable at the time (country-rock, Fm rock, soul and so on). A cult object for some fans, the album boasts some of their best-arranged and most melodically accomplished songs. This is also down to the more varied instrumentation, the line-up changes (indie-pop veteran John Mohan, formerly of the Servants, replaces Marco Thomas on lead guitar), and a notable roster of session players and guests, including Adrian Borland as producer. On the slow "I Can't Make Love to You Anymore" you can hear the caressing sound of a steel guitar, on the swelling soul of "New Day Dawning" a thunderous electric solo, and on "She Deals in Crosses" a volcanic strain of psychedelia. "Cartoon Sky" has the usual crisscrossing guitar and keyboard arpeggios (electronic ones, this time), but Lawrence has never sung better.

The ace up their sleeve is the soul-pop of "Mobile Shack", with the stickiest chorus on the record, a funked-up guitar, and Lawrence stringing together a sequence of syllables like a rap — irresistible. The blend of classic and contemporary genres (it often brings to mind the sophisti-pop of Lloyd Cole & The Commotions), along with the velvety, spacious sound, make "Me and a Monkey..." the most accessible Felt record for newcomers to Eighties indie.

Ten years, ten singles and ten albums, every single one with the article "the" in the title (another objective of Lawrence's diabolical secret plan). Mission accomplished.

He's back in Denim – The rebirth

Denim is Lawrence's most important project of the Nineties, and, even if only for a few months, it would let him realize his dream: reaching the mainstream with an indie project.

The idea was to create a purely nostalgic rock revival built exclusively from elements of the past (70s rock and pop, glam above all), with no contemporary reinterpretation. This is precisely where it differed from the emerging britpop, which instead sounded purely of the 90s, despite having absorbed the ABCs of British pop-rock. Denim's vision combined nostalgia for an era when musicians were genuine stars with a biting satire aimed at the music of that era and the past, especially at everything surrounding it (the music press, the record industry, the media, the fans). The band's structure is even more fluid than Felt's, with a line-up in constant flux and Lawrence increasingly central to the songwriting.

Back In Denim is a masterpiece of British rock through and through. Its massive sound, ringing with electric riffs and vintage electronic keyboards, burned every bridge to the Felt experience. The gleaming, retro-futurist production reaches out to Slade, Gary Glitter and Cars, while Lawrence's nasal vocals are no longer enigmatic and hypnotic but far more cheeky and ironic, somewhere between Jonathan Richman and Lou Reed, without ever losing their distinctive jerky cadence.

Although it's a blend of rock archaeology, the album anticipates Pulp by a couple of years on "Bubblehead" (ironically, Denim would end up opening for them in concert). The power pop of "Fish and Chips" reworks Cars, from the icy keyboards to the heart-wrenching solos, via the neurotic, Ocasek-like vocals.

The stroke of genius is "Middle Of The Road", a sort of remake of the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner", which tears apart the history of so-called classic rock. Rolling Stones, Elvis, the blues, early Dylan, Spector: Lawrence hates them all. Does he really mean it? Maybe, but the song's meta-irony suggests yet another of his provocations – a kind of film where the protagonist breaks the fourth wall (did you notice the rock guitar lick that kicks in right when Lawrence sings "I hate riffs and guitar licks"?). The steady, unvarying beat, the mechanical, flat momentum, the limited chord count and the Free Design-style female choruses make it a kind of forerunner to Stereolab's kraut-pop. They'd play it on TV on Jools Holland's show, squandering yet another chance to win over the general public.

The album's closing stretch contains the best of Denim's tongue-in-cheek aesthetic. "Here Is My Song For Europe", a caustic, autobiographical tirade against the parasites of the record industry, paves the way for the album's masterpiece, "I'm Against The Eighties". It runs over seven minutes and is their cartoon-strip version of "Sister Ray". An endlessly repeated garage-rock riff underpins Lawrence's lyrics, brimming with bitterness toward a decade that wasn't kind to him (“I made a new sound and they put it underground/ It was a thunderbolt crash they said it’s never going to last/ In the 80s”). Over the course of its length, waves of analog electronics roll in (Cars again), along with country-rockabilly solos and kitsch choruses, until the arrangement reaches total saturation.

The other long tracks are also terrific, full of morbid irony – "American Rock" – and childhood nostalgia – "The Osmonds".

Denim On Ice (1996) expands the range of genres Lawrence chews over and regurgitates, taking in the 80s as well (rap, synth pop, new wave, glossy hard rock...). This time the irony and parody carry a polemical rather than nostalgic charge, and more often than before the lyrics touch on social satire. "Council Houses" and "Job Centre" are witty yet sharp snapshots of the British suburbs, amid chronic unemployment and social decay (a bit of bitter irony: Lawrence himself is living in a council house at the time). "The Great Pub Rock Revival" is an AOR tirade against the English scene of the 90s: “Everybody believes what they’re told to/ Everybody believes what they read/ In the Nme”.

Other masterpieces include the single "If I Fell off the Back of a Lorry", pure new wave with slapped bass and eighties-style choruses, the funk-rap of "Brumburger", the cartoonish punk of "Jane Suck Died in 77", the parody of the most epic Ultravox on "Synthesisers In The Rain", plus the usual batch of lethal glam choruses ("Shut Up Sidney", "The Supermodels", "Romeo Jones Is In Love Again"). All of them testify to Lawrence's encyclopedic musical culture and his acid irony toward musical genres and their fans ("Acid? Techno? Kraftwerk? Electro? [...] That's not rock'n'roll!").

The title track, a minute-and-a-half remake of Cockney Rebel's "Sebastian", closes the album with colossal orchestral arrangements.

The following year Lawrence writes "Summer Smash", the lead single for the third LP. It's their first shamelessly commercial track, a sun-drenched pop song with nineties dance tints, freshened up by vividly colorful vocal harmonies. Not a note out of place, a one-way ticket to success – in theory. Already getting radio play ahead of release, the single had already earned Denim an appearance on BBC radio. The day before its release, however, Princess Diana dies in a car accident, and EMI, to avoid any misunderstanding over a title that could be seen as tasteless, pulls it at the last minute. "Summer Smash" effectively remains archive material, never officially released. It was meant to be Denim's launching pad; instead, it became their grave: the band's third album, "Denim Take Over", would never see the light of day under their name.

“Cos I think I’m gonna come/ Straight in at number 1/ And stay there all summer”.

Before dropping them, EMI will release the b-sides collection Novelty Rock, perhaps Lawrence's least commercially viable record of all. It's pure 70s pop archaeology: everything is inspired by hits of dubious dignity, irritating melodies lifted wholesale from the worst guilty pleasures, TV theme tunes and other scraps dredged up from the most remote corners of a teenager's memory from that era. Don't expect the kind of ironic, provocative appreciation found in the recent hypnagogic pop: the project's intent is almost celebratory. Amid all this, only one masterpiece deserves mention, "I Will Cry At Christmas". The spartan production with toy electronics and idiotic melodies would be a preview of what Lawrence would go on to do in the years that followed.

Dropped by his label and left penniless (partly due to his stubborn refusal to tour extensively), the indefatigable Lawrence is forced to reinvent himself on a modest, lo-fi, homemade scale. Thus the Go-Kart Mozart project is born.

Go-Kart Mozart: the first band made entirely of b-sides

"This is the band I threw together on the cheap because I couldn't write anything grand anymore. I put everything I had into Felt and Denim, and at this point I couldn't form a band on that scale again […] I had to do something really simple, thrown together on an ad hoc basis. So I thought: I'll approach music as if it were a b-side. And that was the idea – we're the first band made entirely of b-sides".

With this statement of intent, Lawrence picks up right where he left off at the end of the 90s. A homemade outfit made of pop miniatures, cheap synth sounds, toy keyboards and little electronic muddles. A band that only writes minor songs, the kind of filler tracks by your favourite band that you skip without a second thought.

Instant Wigwarm And Igloo Mixture (1999) is a collection of indie-pop sketches with sophisticated harmonies and deliberately horrible tones (every keyboard is made to sound like a cheap toy instrument on purpose). The whole record is steeped in the sounds and melodies of the hated Eighties that were mocked throughout the Denim era, from sophisti-pop to synth-pop to the indie microcosm from which Felt had emerged. "We're Selfish And Lazy And Greedy", worthy of Lawrence's finest creations, boasts the sweetest, stickiest chorus around. "Here Is A Song" could be the piano-bar version of a track from Felt's final album, the intro "Mandrax For Minx Cats" is an instrumental steeped in delightful lounge-pop; "Elephant Trunk" is an adorable little nursery rhyme.

The record's flaw is that it works as long as Lawrence is writing actual songs, but when it drifts into indulgent diversions, brief interludes, aborted songs (an unlikely instrumental cover of "Windy" by Association) and messes of horrible sounds, the whole thing becomes tiresome and the project's core idea gets lost.

The biographical documentary "Lawrence of Belgravia" gave Lawrence a bit of renewed visibility, and 2012's On The Hot Dog Streets enjoyed an unusual amount of promotion. It's also the first Go-Kart Mozart record that sounds tight and fully realised from start to finish. It was originally meant to be a darker album, but for financial reasons Lawrence had to recycle old Denim material (the never-released third album, shelved after the "Summer Smash" incident).

Although the record is packed wall-to-wall with catchy hooks and sheer fun, the tone is nonetheless more venomous and contentious than on previous works, featuring some of Lawrence's most extreme musings on society and human relationships. "Lawrence Takes Over" is britpop laced with chaotic funk debris, as if played by a little orchestra of Lego men. "Retro-Glancing" is danceable post-punk in the vein of New Order, with gusts of gothic keyboards and bass solos; "West Brom Blues" redoes the Stranglers of the early Eighties. "Glowin' In A Secular Breeze" is a nostalgic ballad about the glorious, now-declining past of the British Empire. The gait and spirit recall the little marches of the Kinks, while the vocal harmonies and the various guitar and piano touches betray an exceptionally fine care for arrangement, easy to spot behind the deceptive lo-fi production.

"White Stilettos In The Sand" and "I Talk With Robot Voice" still ride on icy keyboards, where you can hear echoes of the android wave of Devo. The latter, together with the closing "Men Look at Women", forms a one-two punch of misogynistic invective against any form of relationship with the opposite sex. Lawrence has in fact proudly admitted he hasn't been with a woman since 2000, finding it impossible to reconcile his passion for music with romantic relationships.

The picture one gets of Lawrence based on On The Hot Dog Streets is that of a grump nursing nostalgia for a past he's barely lived through. And our man is perhaps a bit of a conservative too, taking potshots at a united Europe, at an England that's left the door open for far too long, and at women who force men to their knees. It's well known, after all, that technology isn't his thing. He's a vinyl man through and through, never liked CDs ("CDs are rectangles, aren't they? That's why I hate them, because I hate rectangles", he declared in an interview even more deranged than usual), and even the internet and music downloads, in his view, are just two more obstacles for someone trying to make a living out of music.

But Lawrence refuses to give up, even though money is scarce: "I'm in a terrible position, because I think I have something to offer, and I think what I do is better than a lot of people who've made a fortune out of music. But then I think: why should I give up? Why should I give up the one thing I love, the only thing I'm any good at, just because all these people manage to earn enough money to live off a single advert?". Only an outsized love of music could push a loser of his calibre to keep producing new material with such conviction, even through the darkest periods of his life – he's gone through spells of homelessness.

As for reforming Felt, though, he won't hear of it: that chapter is closed for good.

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