Felt Mountain - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Felt Mountain received generally positive reviews from music critics. Allmusic reviewer Heather Phares referred to the album as a "strange and beautiful mix of the romantic, eerie, and world-weary" and named it "one of 2000's most impressive debuts". Eric Wittmershaus of Flak Magazine called Felt Mountain "an enchanting, accessible debut", citing "Human" and "Deer Stop" as its best songs. In a review for Pitchfork Media, Matt LeMay described the album as "elegant and graceful", but felt that the "songs aren't all that different from one another." Sacha Esterson of musicOMH compared Felt Mountain to Portishead and wrote that it could be a "contender for the year's best album". Yahoo! Music's Ken Micallef commented that the duo "make elegiac music as elegant as 'Diamonds Are Forever' and as haunting as Bobbie Gentry's 'Ode To Billie Joe'", concluding that the album's "dark night of the soul is mostly bleak, beautiful, and deliciously bizarre." Andrew Lynch of entertainment.ie noted that "lthough at times it feel a little contrived, for the most part this is stylishly decadent music that should appeal to all fans of film noir." The NME viewed the album as "cold, desolate and old-fashioned" and argued that Felt Mountain was not a "bad concept" except that "Portishead got there first, and managed to update the spy-film vibe with a hefty dose of break-driven twilight melancholia."

Q magazine included the album on its list of the top fifty albums of 2000. The following year, Felt Mountain was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize, an annual music prize awarded for the best British or Irish album from the previous year. In 2006, the album was included in Robert Dimery's book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

In November 2009, The Times ranked Felt Mountain at number sixteen on its list of the 100 best pop albums of the 2000s. The album was placed at number ninety-four on Slant Magazine's list of the best albums of the 2000s.