Pictorial Jackson Review [CD]

I had the same problem with the wrong pressing. I called Cherry Records (from Oz!) and they were VERY helpful and are sending me a replacement. Here's their number ... 02087 404110.

(5 stars for helpfulness by the way)

All of Felt's albums are great - usually I give them all 4 to 5 stars. However, Cherry Red made a serious mistake with this reissue. The first 8 tracks on this disc are actually from Felt's 9th album "Train Above The City". Even though the label lists the correct track names, the music is in fact not correct. The last two tracks are the only two correct tracks for this album. I don't know what Cherry Red intends to do about this mistake; I guess we will have to wait and see...

Rating: 7/10

Best songs: "Apple Boutique", "Bitter End", "Don't Die on My Doorstep", "The Darkest Ending"

The Pictorial Jackson Review may very well be the most frustrating of all Felt's albums; we have a very fine first side which sees Felt going right for the pop jugular, and a second side that takes in ambient jazz with mostly unimpressive results. So let's concentrate on the first eight tracks, which take their cue from Poem of the River's delightful pop treat "Stained-Glass Windows in the Sky" and delivers a set of utterly unpretentious, cheery and engaging mini-gems that work very nicely, even if I was initially rather disappointed with this new, relatively simple direction. The mystique, sweep and drama of Felt's earlier days had been well and truly swept aside for a sound that was nowhere near as ambitious, though it's informal, upbeat mood soon won me over. The band still maintain that unique character of theirs to make this a quintessentially Felt album, but this is nevertheless a different sound to that of "Primitive Painters", "The World is as Soft as Lace" or "Dismantled King is Off the Throne"; personally, I prefer the earlier material - as good as the Martin Duffy years are, the Maurice Deebank era was the stuff of pure magic- but taken on its own terms, this first side works brilliantly.

"Apple Boutique" has great guitars and sweet organ work, not to mention charming lyrics (plus Lawrence doing his best sedated Lou Reed impersonation) and a simple, summery mood that works a treat, and clearly the band thought so too, as this method is repeated over the next seven songs. Luckily, none of it gets stale or repetitive, as the playing is consistently lively and the songs themselves are breezily short, with only one ("Under a Pale Light") spanning over three minutes. Other highlights on this first side are the delightful "Bitter End" (which has a splendid guitar performance), the delicate "Under a Pale Light" and the kooky "Don't Die on My Doorstep". Encompassing less than twenty minutes of music, the first eight songs on this album would have worked very well on their own, but then things go all pear-shaped on the majority of the second side, when the album mutates into a jazzy ambient work; "Sending Lady Load" starts off reasonably well enough, but then those dreaded xylophone noodlings that would dominate the cocktail-bar banality of Train Above the City (Felt`s worst album) creep into earshot, and it all becomes wearisome. Also, at over twelve minutes, this piece is far too long. It's almost enough to entirely sink the album, but the closing track "The Darkest Ending" resolves matters a little; exploring the same direction as "Sending Lady Load" but with much better results, it has an eerie, spooky atmosphere and essentially delivers far more in its three minutes than the preceding track attempted in twelve.

So, despite that unfortunate excursion into near-elevator music on the second side, The Pictorial Jackson Review is well worth getting for the first eight tracks (and, to be fair, the last track too), but be warned.....a pressing error on early copies of this 2003 reissue resulted in everything from "Apple Boutique" to "Don't Die on My Doorstep" being accidentally replaced with the entirety of Felt's next album Train Above the City, before returning to the album proper for its last two tracks.