eMusic Review 0
Six years passed between the Feelies' debut and The Good Earth, during which time the band's singer/guitarists Bill Million and Glenn Mercer lost their rhythm section, drifted into a considerably mellower New Jersey band called the Trypes, and more or less absorbed them. The reconstituted Feelies, with the two-percussionist lineup that's stayed with them ever since, had the speed and rhythmic depth of their earlier incarnation, but put aside their old brittleness and tension for a new kind of pastoral calmness. Co-produced by R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, The Good Earth repurposes the frantic propulsion of Feelies heroes the Velvet Underground as a lithe, graceful celebration of their own natural strum-and-drum idiom. "Become what you are/Can't be too hard," they sing.
Not a lot of hooks jump out of the mix: as an album, it's more about flow than signposts or destinations, and most of Mercer and Million's lyrics are barely formed and barely murmured. But the simple three- and four-chord riffs that underpin everything here (even the experimental piece "When Company Comes") are the skeleton for warm, harmonious arrangements that speed forward frictionlessly. Even when the group revs all the way up, on the album's centerpiece "Slipping (Into Something)" (which the nascent… read more »
