Felt – Train Above the City
(Note: This article was written in 2008 for an old Blogspot music blog that I managed (flyingairplane.blogspot.com); meaning, I was 18 years old when I wrote this. The blog's format was such that each article contained a short “review” of an album and a download link to the full album (usually through Mediafire). Blogspot was a go-to source for obscure music back in 2008, with many blogs like this popping up with download links, and I wanted to be part of the illegal-music-download literati myself. Unfortunately, this blatant violation of copyright eventually caught up with the blog (and most others of its ilk) and got it removed from the Blogspot service entirely; however, the first page of the blog remains archived through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.)
I guess Lawrence was just bored, or maybe he was working on other things… but Train Above the City is entirely not composed by Lawrence. I suppose Martin Duffy composed the music, since it seems that Martin Duffy is perhaps the only musician who played on this album. The funny thing is, Lawrence named all of the songs, and brilliantly I might add: Press Softly on the Breaks Holly, Teargardens, Book of Swords, etc. Firstly, the music is mediocre at best. I'm not going to lie and say “best Felt album!” just because Lawrence declared it his favorite in some lo-fi interview. The whole album is instrumental; every song is a little piano ditty that makes you feel like you're in a bar full of old hipsters drinking martinis and what not. Perhaps Lawrence just thought that releasing this album would have been a clever thing to do. I mean, it's obvious that Lawrence was trying to maintain indie stardom… and perhaps “Forever Breathes the Lonely Word” and “The Pictorial Jackson Review” was making Felt a little bit too popular for his liking…