6. FeltIgnite The Seven Cannons
The ten-year, ten-album career of Felt divides neatly in halves: with rococo lead guitarist Maurice Deebank and without. This is his last album with the band, and the first with equally hyperactive organist Martin Duffy (probably not a coincidence). The effect is like Yes if Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman just kept soloing, under and over the vocals and each other. And, the album is produced by Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie, who flanges almost everything, hard, almost all the time. The centerpiece is the inscrutable and euphoric ‘Primitive Painters’; on it there are two lead vocals (generally undecipherable), an ever-soloing guitarist, a usually soloing organist, all swimming in flangers, and then the bassist starts soloing too, and it’s probably the best pop single of the 80s.