#crazy rhythms

The Feelies- Crazy Rhythms (Post-Punk, Art Punk, Jangle Pop) Released: February 29, 1980 [Stiff Records] Producer(s): Bill Million, Glenn Mercer, Mark Abel

Crazy Rhythms The Feelies 1980, Stiff (Bandcamp)

I was in a conversation recently where the other person cited the Feelies as a band that discovered their sound early and never changed. This, to me, is transparently insane: the Feelies, as any right person should know, changed exactly once. It was between their 1980 debut Crazy Rhythms and 1986 sophomore comeback The Good Earth. Somewhere in that break they dropped their gawky, New Wave affect in favour of a graceful, rural gravitas, and the nerviness of their driving beats turned to something more Zen. The Feelies have never released a bad album, and I love later efforts like Good Earth and Here Before, but those records feel like the work of a different project altogether, a New Order to the original lineup’s Joy Division perhaps, a Luna to a Galaxie 500.

No, Crazy Rhythms stands apart from the other records, and alongside Remain in Light, as American New Wave’s ne plus ultra statement on horizonless rhythm. The “songier” parts of the songs (that is, the parts with lyrics) work brilliantly, like the Velvet Underground meeting Wire, but listening to the album alone and in full, they begin to seem like mere islands floating on a primeval sea. It’s those instrumental voyages that inevitably consume each song, the album itself, and the listener. When you get away from the time-stamped vocal passages you find yourself in a place that could be the soup from which modern rock emerged or the dark future star into which it will inevitably plunge.

That’s because the Feelies were formed in the perfect place and time to be key acolytes of the dead-but-dreaming god that was the Velvet Underground. Like all truly groundbreaking bands, the Velvets left so many ideas lying barely explored that simply by being among the first and best to flesh one out a band could deliver an immortal statement of its own. Songwriters Bill Million and Glenn Mercer and their compatriots seemed to understand the potential of the Velvets’ most propulsive ideas better than any other act of their time, and they represented an evolutionary leap in terms of musicianship: at the Feelies’ sweat-soaked finest they transcend their influences and become a foundational band in their own right.

They made many excellent records, but only one Crazy Rhythms.

The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms (1980)

The Feelies - Raised Eyebrows (1980)