(Untitled)

Over at Stylus Magazine, Todd Hutlock lists his Top Ten Song and/or Album Titles by Felt. As fan parlour games go, it's a good one - and I would disagree almost entirely with his choices. So here, in the spirit of the Sunday of life, are some alternative suggestions...

#10 All The People I Like Are Those That Are Dead
OK, Todd and I are in agreement on this one at least - no way around it. Amazing - not least because of how weirdly Lawrence syncopates it when he's singing.

#9 The Final Resting Place Of The Ark
Impeccable. Despite being one of my least favourite Felt tracks.

#8 Stained Glass Windows In The Sky
At the purple end of things (see also: The World Is Soft As Lace; Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty). And something like the diametric opposite of a classic 'why not?' Denim title, e.g. Internet Curtains.

#7 Templeroy
I always assumed this was a word Lawrence had scavenged (I was vaguely imagining a ceremonial position in the British Raj). It appears, however, to be a wonderful coinage of his own.

#6 Buried Wild Blind
Always hard to detach titles from the tracks, and I love this one. But the title has a lyricism all its own: desperation in amber.

#5 Mexican Bandits
There are several different genres of Felt title and this belongs to 'overspecific local colour' (see also: Roman Litter; The Seventeenth Century; Vasco da Gama). This, though, is one of my favourites. The instrumentals often seem to end up with the best titles, perhaps for obvious reasons.

#4 Primitive Painters
Christian and I disagree on the merits of the song. The title is also arguably part of the category mentioned above, and perhaps I only like it quite so much because I'm obsessed with cave painting. Nonetheless: oblique - evocative - exemplary.

#3 Black Ship In The Harbour
Auguring ill: a gothic novel in six syllables.

#2 Stains On A Decade
The best album title, belatedly. And probably the most succinct summation of Felt as a band out of time, perfectly aligned (10 albums, 10 years etc.) with a decade to which they did not belong.

#1 Sempiternal Darkness
I don't know where Lawrence picked up 'sempiternal' (in a Chatterton poem?), but the title imparts a weird Miltonic gloom to the beginning of an album  - possibly my favourite - which has many infernal overtones ("You're reading from a Season in Hell / And you don't know what it's about...").