Pop review: Go-Kart Mozart at the Lexington, N1
March 24, 2018
★★★★★
It has taken a while, given that he is 56 and yet to break out of cult stardom, but the time of Lawrence is finally arriving. This Birmingham iconoclast set the template for tasteful indie pop with the dreamlike, serious-minded band Felt, who released an album a year throughout the 1980s. Then he took an about-turn and embraced 1970s pop kitsch with Denim, who almost had a hit in 1997 with the single Summer Smash — but then Princess Diana died and the label melted down all remaining copies.
Go-Kart Mozart was Lawrence’s response to such terrible luck; a “B-side band”, in his words, who abandoned all hope of commercial success with chirpy songs about poverty, drug addiction and despair. After all these years, however,…