"Crazy Rhythms / The Good Earth"
23 November 2009, 08:05
| Written by Tom Whyman
The Feelies were a bunch of geeky minimalists who are perhaps best known to at least this posterity from the fact that their debut record, Crazy Rhythms sneaked a place on Pitchfork's best albums list of the 1980s. For my money though, like fuck it should have done - the album has some great percussion on it sure, but its mostly built around the rhythms with guitar drones stretched over it like rubber bands about to snap... on opener 'The Boy With Perpetual Nervousness' its a pretty powerful thing but boy does it get monotonous. No, its a good album but this is genius very much in pupae.By contrast, second album The Good Earth has to be one of the most underrated albums of all time. I'd never even really heard of it before getting it packaged with Crazy Rhythms to review the two re-issues together but its really, really amazing. It takes all the sure listenably tense but ultimately aimless, buttoned-up-shirt-collar swell of the debut and turns it into something big and overpoweringly focused, that sounds like REM on a roadtrip gone backwards, falling asleep in a field and watching the sun set and then rise in reverse. Or, just “REM played on the wrong speed,” as a different observer noted. It really is a vastly superior record and more than that, it has to be ranked as a pretty much essential album for anyone who has ever demanded “just gimme indie rock.” Highlight of highlights has to be 'The High Road'- rhythmically forceful, jangly, big, and poppy- the repetitiveness here is subtle but its still about as monotonous as a brick, it sort of changes up every now and then and even has a solo, of sorts, but really its just the same riff played over and over again, mostly, but you don't really notice because that's the song's whole trick, I guess.
Buy the albums from Amazon | [itunes link="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/the-feelies/id261716484?uo=4" title="The_Feelies" text="iTunes"]
Get the Best Fit take on the week in music direct to your inbox every Friday
Read next
Listen
Kassie Krut’s deliciously frenetic new industrial pop track “Racing Man”
Aoife Wolf faces angels and demons in her hazy new single “Bristle of Delusion”
Oh My Sun makes their debut with ‘70s-songwriter-inspired single “5 Pieces”
Fievel Is Glauque’s sprawling new eclectic French track “Haut Contre Bas"
Filmore! explores the unpredictability of life in textured D&B track “It Never Ends”
Niki Colet stuns in sultry new shoegaze single “Getaway Car”
Reviews
Halsey
The Great Impersonator
01 Nov 2024
Elias Rønnenfelt
Heavy Glory
31 Oct 2024
Mount Eerie
Night Palace
31 Oct 2024
Or:la
Trusting Theta
29 Oct 2024