RECORDS
The unending fuggin’ clickety-snick of 1,000 push-mowers jellies the afternoon air into a cube of dark boredom ’n’ inner numbness: the suburbs’ obsession with stability curdled into spiritual stagnation. Then one fine day, a clatter of cheap guitars and many drummers drumming rises to mock the drone of 1,000,000 mundane household chores and dull routines.
RECORDS
WHITE CASTLE BLUES
THE FEELIES Only Life (Coyote/A&M)
The unending fuggin’ clicketysnick of 1,000 push-mowers jellies the afternoon air into a cube of dark boredom ’n’ inner numbness: the suburbs’ obsession with stability curdled into spiritual stagnation. Then one fine day, a clatter of cheap guitars and many drummers drumming rises to mock the drone of 1,000,000 mundane household chores and dull routines. A dense column of sonic hyperactivity starts to swirl. Prophets have appeared ’midst the lawn furniture and wrested redemption for themselves out of the dippity, deadening social milieu. The Feelies, outta Haledon, New Jersey, become the Ecstatic Everyman incarnate.
The sound grew out of the hallowed, hypnotic maximinial enerjet ram-THUMM of the Velvets, methodically extended and expanded ’pon. They cross-hatched it with the whorling whine of the Beatles’ Revolverera raga roll added angled percussives, sounding at times like choirs of chattering teeth. Plus the ethereal, excisive, electro troll-shriek lead guitar work—the outcome of too many nights spent zonking out to King Crimson and Eno. They created A Thing of exquisite simplicity, beauty and power.
Only Life is only the third longplayerthe Feelies haveyielded in