flugelhorn and a cuckoo clock to switch between tempos. "Utopia" was released as the album's second single. The album closes with "Horse Tears", a minimalist piano ballad with filtered vocals. Critical reception The album received critical acclaim. 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, 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 "[a]lthough at times it a little contrived, for the most part this is stylishly decadent music that should appeal to all fans of film noir." 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 50 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 16 on its list of the 100 best pop albums of the 2000s. The album was placed at number 94 on Slant Magazines list of the best albums of the 2000s. Commercial performanceFelt Mountain debuted at number 144 on the UK Albums Chart, selling 914 copies in its first week. In September 2001, the album peaked at number 57, and had sold 177,096 copies by August 2005. Felt Mountain was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on 12 October 2001.