The Feelies: Crazy Rhythms (Stiff, 1980) and Only Life (A&M, 1988)

I was born in 1977, which means that my sense of what was happening culturally in the 1980s was filtered through TV, radio, a step-sister two years older, and a postmodernist/artist uncle who, brandishing a copy of Meat Is Murder, proclaimed to me in 1987 that "alternative music is mass culture's only hope." My memory of the 80s is thus full of false cues, yet there are little details that I remembered vividly only years later: skinny men in tight jeans with dress shirts a size too large tucked in, sleeves unbuttoned. Large glasses. Women with ample crepe skirts. Unfortunate bolo-tie choices. "College rock." All of that comes back when I listen to the first and third Feelies albums.

Whatever happened to "college rock"? The words, these days, bring to mind Dave Matthews and crowds of fraternity and sorority fans more interested in beer-bongs than reading. My untrustworthy memory maintains, though, that there was for a while a period in which "college rock" was a self-contained genre of jittery, shimmery music appealing to weirdos, nerds, and intellectuals. As undesirable as that fanbase may have been for some, the centre of that venn diagram seemed to me, when I was eleven or so years old, like a social standing to aspire to. The way the music sounded made its fans seem cooler by association: erudite, capable, and sharp, it was music that made you feel as though you were in on something.

The Feelies were the archetype of that certain sound in college rock to which many bands clearly aspired and but which few achieved--probably why they sounded so familiar when I discovered them in my mid-20s, 20 years after they stopped releasing records. All over their albums are crisp telecaster guitars that stretch from breezily clean to overdriven and oozing sound then back to clean again, drums that echo-- but just enough, like bootsteps in an abandoned garage--and half-muffled bass that gulps away behind it all. The vocals are the best part--inevitably delivered a wry baritone, they sound knowing and wise and odd. My favourite track on the Feelies' debut, Crazy Rhythms, sums it up nearly worldlessly, twisting sparse nonsense lyrics around the coolest echoing guitar I've ever heard and stuttering, syncopated drums that turn abruptly surf-skimming: the song, "Raised Eyebrows," suitably cocks an eyebrow at the listener and in doing so illustrates what's so appealing about the entire genre. The music twitters and jangles, the voice scoffs, and listening to it feels like having a good conversation with some far-out character you're cool enough to know. It's interesting, and it makes you feel interesting just for listening to it.

In 1993 I was volunteering at a university radio station when David Lowrey, formely of Camper Van Beethoven (my favourite early "alternative music"), came in to be interviewed prior to a show by his new band Cracker. Being a 16-year-old CVB worshipper, I watched the interview with my nose practically pressed to the studio glass. The interviewer asked him about what he thought of the bands playing "alternative" music, a term that was by then already beaten meaningless by publicists and music press. He replied, somewhat bitterly, that he didn't understand what made bands like the Lemonheads and Soul Asylum an alternative to anything. "What's weird about Even Dando?" he asked. "Nothing!" For a while that seemed only like sour grapes, an irrelevant complaint by a guy bitter his best band had broken up before they could get famous, but as I got older I came to realise that he was right: weird music is good. It expresses the emotions otherwise left out of the range of popular song, and it makes you feel alright about being whatever nut you actually are.

Which is maybe why these Feelies records still sound so great. The title track of 1980's Crazy Rhythms fidgets convulsively around a hepped-up beat, the guitars fresh and trembling with reverb, into a ball of unrestrained awkwardness kicking free to accidental grace. "Fa Ce La," the album's other best known track, has a similar tense velocity, but the band keeps the frantic pace for nearly the whole record, also managing straight-faced covers of both the Beatles and the Stones. Only Life, recorded at the other end of the 1980s, shows its pedigree-- the drums have a little too much echo, the guitar a bit more reverb than necessary, but the songwriting is just as strong. Though the tempo is slower in spots, the songs hang together perfectly. The unmistakeably 80s-production even brings a shivering edge to a couple of tracks, notably "The Undertow," a goosebump-inducing handful of percussion, jangle, and faint drone organized around the gentlest d-beat. Sparse arrangement and carefully placed lyrics give this record a breezy springtime feeling, which with its weak spots feels like fresh grass too muddy to step on yet or blinding-bright sunlight blasting through still-leaveless trees: it has its faults, but it's hard to argue it's not beautiful. Only Life is by all accounts a more direct pop record than Crazy Rhythms. It's not nearly as jerky and odd, definitely lacks something for that, and it bears both the positive and negative marks of maturity. There's a Velvet Underground cover that's as brash as their previous covers of the Beatles and the Stones but far more smoothly delivered. The band, by this point, has learned a few social graces, and sanded down the sharpest points of awkwardness in their sound, which is to their detriment. Yet they does pop well, and still do "college rock" better than any of their imitators.

Incidentally, the reason I didn't mention the Good Earth, the second Feelies album, is that I don't have it, and since I discovered the band a few years ago I've been putting off buying it so that I can stretch my enjoyment of the aforementioned other records as long as possible. When a great band leaves in their wake only a small number of records, it just isn't sensible to rush into listening to all of them at once and burning them all out at the same time. Far better to spread them out around years, events, and memories. So I'll get around to talking about The Good Earth when I eventually get the record.