June 11, 1998
Look at these dorks. For God's sake, they're just kids, and they look as if they'd be more comfortable sitting in a dark room doing equations than playing rock and roll. And they may well have done so, because they came up with an absolutely fascinating musical formula. The Talking Heads doing Velvet Underground covers comes close, but The Feelies are darker than the former and more rhythmically complex than the latter.
Still, the elements are there - the tense, jittery electric strumming, overly intellectual lyrics (note titles like "The Boy With The Perpetual Nervousness" and "Loveless Love"), droning experimental edge and declamatory vocals fuse into a uniquely odd record.
Listening to the skewed, driving electric pop of "Original Love" and "Fa Ce La", you can literally see Peter Buck of REM and Gordon Gano of Violent Femmes sitting in front of their speakers teaching themselves the taut riffs. The album is indeed muscled along by the crazy rhythms of the title, but the hummable melodies are equally memorable, as are the stripped-down covers of the Beatles "Everybody's Got Something To Hide (except me and my monkey) and the Stones' "Paint It Black".
The dorks make this bare-boned, high-tempo complexity sound easy - maybe that's why this album had so much palpable influence on 80's guitar rock. After hearing the relentless skeletal charge of "Forces at Work" or the trebly, chattering anti-anthem "Raised Eyebrows", you'll probably want to pick up a six-string yourself. I encourage you to do so; and if you're inspired to play anything as weirdly compelling as Crazy Rhythms, let me know so I can buy it immediately.
- Jared O'Connor
dork avant-punk