The Feelies: Crazy Rhythms [BAR NONE]

Why you'll love it

This Bar/None edition presents the remastered album in stereo, from the band's longtime home label. Its mix of post-punk and jangle pop helped shape alternative rock, and R.E.M. were among the bands who cited it as an influence.

This edition

• Remastered
• Stereo mix

About the album

In 1980, when most of the downtown crowd was getting louder, the Feelies went the other way. Glenn Mercer and Bill Million wanted cleaner guitars and lots of percussion, a reaction to a punk scene they felt had already done it all, and the result is a record of tightly coiled, clean-toned rhythm that never stops moving.

"The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness" opens with a slow fade-in before the strumming starts racing, "Fa Cé-La" and "Loveless Love" chug along on tightly wound rhythm guitar, and "Original Love" builds into a frenzy of drums and toms. Their cover of the Beatles' "Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Except Me and My Monkey)" fits right in, and the title track closes with the whole band locked in a hypnotic groove. NME's Paul Du Noyer heard Jonathan Richman, the Velvet Underground and Talking Heads in the mix.

Stiff put it out first in the UK, and Bar/None brought it back in 2009, the same year the Feelies played it in full for All Tomorrow's Parties' Don't Look Back series. Nervous energy has rarely sounded so tidy, and we've found it pairs rather well with a third coffee.

Also at Kops: more The Feelies on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Bar/None (cat# BRNLP196 C1), a reissue of the 1980 album.