Penelope Tree goes on a trip
About 80 pages into Diana Melly's memoir Take A Girl Like Me , which I'm currently reading, Melly mentions how, at a certain moment in her life, she had "a new friend, Penelope Tree". Oh, Penelope Tree! Yep, the 60s model, who looked, says Melly, "like something wonderful from outerspace". The same Penelope Tree (could there ever be two people with that name?) immortalised in one of Felt's greatest songs. Dig it, man: Yeah, never mind Primitive Painters, this is the real deal. One of those times when Felt got pretty much everything right: breathy, anguished and super-mannered vocals from Lawrence, dinky but strangely high-in-the-mix drumming, beautiful guitar figures, exquisitely-beautiful backing vocals (female ones? if so, by who?), lovely mysterious lyrics. And a great cover. Not just one Penelope Tree, but two, headshot images overlapping like a Warhol screen test. A girl from another planet, indeed. Melly met Tree while volunteering at Release, t...
