Part Of ‘Jordan’s Essential Music: Break Up Your Band’

Besides, they never really looked the part anyway; make no mistake, this is geek rock played loud and proud. So when the band lost their original rhythm section of Anton Fier and Kieth Denunzio following the release of Crazy Rhythms, their approach understandably shifted, with the newly reconstituted line-up loosening considerably. Arriving six years after their debut, the Feelies’ underrated sophomore album, The Good Earth, found the band embracing other, more common forms of patience, though with a palpable verve still very much in step with the time. It’s been years since American audiences have even had access to compare and contrast these records, but after languishing in obscurity for far too long, Domino has now thankfully rescued these two classics in their original standalone form (bonus tracks excised to an accompanying digital download, thank you).

Nowadays, the Feelies get slotted in amongst other new wave acts of the time, which isn’t an entirely inaccurate arena in which to place them, but they did in fact arrive at the tail end of the first wave of New York punk. Evidencing this divide, the band borrowed equally from both Devo and the Velvet Underground, bringing their herky-jerk rhythms and single chord meditations back and forth across the Hudson to both CBGBs and Maxwell’s. And at a time when both Television and the Talking Heads were expanding the boundaries of art-rock, the Feelies ran concurrent with an equally bracing brand of guitar pop. The band’s first and most influential album, Crazy Rhythms, brought together four New Jersey-based college kids just confident enough in their unique approach to be considered professional, and what resulted was one of the greatest documents of the late-70s/early-80s experimental rock scene.

By my estimation, over half of Crazy Rhythms’ runtime is given over to instrumental improvisation, while the band’s then-burgeoning melodic sense surface just sporadically enough to push the band under the pop umbrella. Opener “The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness” is just as tense and vigorous as its title would imply, riding an ever-evolving one-note phrase through an intricately patterned volley of swells and recessions. It never actually climaxes, but instead walks a tightrope between protracted minimalism and staunch post-punk.

We’ll get to the titular percussive ingenuity in a second, but it’s important to note the sharp, cleanly rendered guitar parts which dart throughout those crazy rhythms. Duel guitarists Glenn Mercer and Bill Million achieved this effect by foregoing pedals and instead plugging directly into the soundboard. As a result, Crazy Rhythms carries with it one of the most unique production aesthetics ever caught on tape; and it’s a sound that has so fully permeated the indie-rock landscape that it’s rather difficult to think how exciting it must have sounded nearly 30 years ago. In fact, it’s such a distinct sound that it has subsequently been picked up and refashioned by everyone from R.E.M. to Weezer, the latter of whom knowingly aped the Crazy Rhythms cover art for their own classic debut.

At one point or another during Crazy Rhythms' 9 tracks, all four band members get credit for percussion duties; however, it's full-time drummer Anton Fier that puts on the real show, dancing as he does around both the pocket and those single-minded guitar leads – hence this album's title. Of course, percussion in this case doesn’t refer solely to Fier’s kit work. As the hilariously detailed instrumental credits point out, Fier is accompanied at various points by maracas, cans, coat racks, woodblocks, pipes, sleigh bells, temple blocks, and “spasmodic drums.” The title-track even predicts the whole modern dance-rock craze with its liberal use of counterpoint cowbell (take that James Murphy!). Few albums have so ably presaged such a diverse selection of genres, and yet here we are thirty years on, and Crazy Rhythms hasn’t aged a day.

As alluded to before, the original lime-up of the Feelies didn’t last much longer after the release of the debut, and it would be another six years before core songwriters Mercer and Million would recruit suitable replacements. The Feelies moniker would be used only sporadically in the intervening years, as Mercer and Million would occasionally bring a rotating cast of players along to fill out the band for rare live performances. However, the debut had already left impression enough to attract the ears of R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, and before long he had enticed Mercer and Million to officially reconstitute the band.

As revolving members of the touring line-up and various other Feelies side-projects, duel percussionists Dave Weckerman and Stan Demeski, along with bassist Brenda Sauter, would permanently step in to stabilize the Feelies. Considering such a significant gap between albums (not to mention line-ups), it’s understandable, then, that the resulting album would be such a stylistic left-turn. And, perhaps even more significantly, with Buck himself lending a hand at production duties, it’s no wonder The Good Earth sounds about as quintessentially college-rock as any album of its time.

Judging by their track record, I’ve got a strong hunch that “Slow Down,” the final song on The Good Earth, is titled as such for a reason. Musically, the album is a near spot-on recreation of mid-80s R.E.M., with all the acoustic down-strokes and wordless harmonizing that description might imply. And despite its unmistakable similarity to their contemporaries, The Good Earth is a fantastic album in its own right, perhaps overlooked only for so bravely breaking with a winning formula. The mix itself is much more democratic, with each instrument given equal space. Mercer’s vocals in particular are noticeably much lower in the mix; but, even still, his ever-developing allegiance to the Velvets is unmistakable, most notably on album centerpiece “Slipping (Into Something),” in which Mercer drolly sing-speaks his way through a skipping, Loaded-style strummer. The Good Earth is easily the more melodically sound of the two records, and although it doesn’t break ground the way its predecessor had so unwittingly done six years prior, it's nevertheless something of a lost classic for Feelies fans.

Measuring influence can often times prove to be a fool’s errand, particularly when re-approaching albums decades on from their release. But in the case of the Feelies – who have recently reunited at the behest of Thurston Moore, playing a number of dates with Sonic Youth in the summer of 2008 – their disciples have never been shy about expressing their devotion. As a result, the musical stature of the Feelies, particularly that of Crazy Rhythms, has grown exponentially over the years, and largely without the benefit of widely available recordings. So while it’s great to have a landmark record back in print, it’s equally satisfying to have its follow-up and sonic foil here to provide context. Inspiration wasn’t a passing virtue for the Feelies, and now with the crisp, clear, remastered documentation to prove such theories, it should be even more interesting to see where they go from here.

Last Word:

Back in print after years of fetching outrageous sums of money, the first two Feelies records have returned to take their rightful place in pop’s hierarchy.

Review By:
Jordan Cronk, Music Editor

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