Go-Kart Mozart - Mozart’s Mini Mart

Lawrence is certainly a man of his word. When he said he’d disband Felt after ten years of the band’s existence, that is exactly what he did. The band was finally starting to make it - so what? That’s what he said! Denim’s Seventies K-Tel (no wonder a man that goes under such a name is his musical right hand now) style pop didn’t make much splash either. It was great but - so what?

In 1998, Lawrence comes up with Go-Kart Mozart. As Felt was named after something from a Television song, so did Go-Kart Mozart come out of Springsteen's “Blinded By The Light”. Rhymes with "destined to produce a delight," I guess. And Lawrence does, again, with Mozart’s Mini Mart.

Ok, no great guitar sounds some old Felt fans might have been hoping for, but Lawrence is obviously a man who doesn’t look back, and certainly pays discerning attention to what goes on around him. And that is certainly reflected in his lyrics (try “Relative Poverty” or “Facing The Scorn of Tomorrow’s Generation” for size), with his tongue firmly in cheek (sometimes even when he’s singing).

But what characterises his music from Felt to Go-Cart Mozart is that he also has another discerning characteristic - taste, and that is the taste for near perfection pop, whether it is with guitars or with synths and drum machines like it is on this latest outing. It is just that it seems the examples of his current musical tastes always went against the grain of current major musical tastes. People always seem to be coming back to Lawrence, only to see him already doing something else.

Nothing new in that respect on Mozart’s Mini Mart. Here he is anywhere between his other two great contemporaries, the late great Mark E. Smith and Jarvis Cocker, and yet it is just Lawrence himself.  With some nifty pop variations of every pop sound, he found right there and then. From new wave-ish variations of “When You’re Depressed” (“When You’re Depressed/ You’re Depressed”, what more is to say there?), to chirpy synth pap of “Big Ship”, to Bowie circa Diamond Dogs memories of “Crocodile Rokstarz” (with some crunchy guitar too!) to pub chant of “Knickers On The Line By 3 Chord Fraud” and mellow intro tones of “Chromium-Plated We’re So Elated” (turning into another pop synth stomp). All that and more in 17 tracks Lawrence collected in the last few years.

Will it gain Lawrence the wider recognition he’s craving all along? Probably not. Should you ignore yet another great album he made? At your own (musical) peril.