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Crazy Rhythms

by

The Feelies

 
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Crazy Rhythms
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Avg: 4.0 (293 ratings)

Four brilliant nerds cut a hyper-minimalist indie-rock diamond — a classic nearly twenty years later

  • We Say...

    Review by Douglas Wolk

    For the first few years of their existence, the Feelies played the same nine songs over and over and over and over and over. So when it came time to make their debut album, they ended up with, as producer Mark Abel put it, "the culmination of four years of fantasizing about how they were going to record those songs." Crazy Rhythms is a fetishistically hyper-precise album, even by the standards of the New York City of 1980: most of the songs hover around as few chords as they can get away with, with the thinnest, cleanest, driest dual-guitar interlock ever committed to tape, rattling percussion, and frontmen Glenn Mercer and Bill Million's uptight yelp occasionally surfacing in the mix. They're minimal, but they're fast. The one cover here is the Beatles' "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey," and their arrangement suggests that what drew the Feelies to the song is its relentless cowbell-hammering. Most of Mercer and Million's songwriting is all about precision, too: the rocket-speed chantalong "Fa Cé La," re-recorded from their debut single, is so tightly constructed that the little shift in its bass pattern that appears a few seconds before the end shakes the whole thing apart, and "Raised Eyebrows" is basically just a minuscule riff played as hard as they can possibly manage, with roughly two lines' worth of lyrics as decoration. The album's title track encapsulates the Feelies' aesthetic: the lyrics are all about emotions contradicting themselves full-force, Mercer dispatches them as quickly as possible ("can't relax when there's things to do," he mutters), and then the band singlemindedly drills down on a single-chord groove until they hit an explosive pocket of chorus.

  • They Say...

    Review by Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

    Even the cover is a winner, with a washed-out look that screams new wave via horn-rimmed glasses, even more so than contemporaneous pictures of either Elvis Costello or the Embarrassment. But if it was all look and no brain, Crazy Rhythms would long ago have been dismissed as an early-'80s relic. That's exactly what this album is not, right from the soft, haunting hints of percussion that preface the suddenly energetic jump of the appropriately titled "The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness." From there the band delivers seven more originals plus a striking cover of the Beatles' "Everybody's Got Something to Hide" that rips along even more quickly than the original. The guitar team of Mercer and Million smokes throughout, whether it's soft, rhythmic chiming with a mysterious, distanced air or blasting, angular solos. But Fier is the band's secret weapon, able to play straight-up beats but aiming at a rumbling, strange punch that updates Velvet Underground/Krautrock trance into giddier realms. Mercer's obvious Lou Reed vocal inflections make the VU roots even clearer, but even at this stage of the game there's something fresh about the work the quartet does, even 20 years on -- a good blend of past and present, rave-up and reflection. When the group's later label, A&M, finally got around to reissuing the album for the first time stateside, a curious bonus was included: a version of the Rolling Stones' "Paint It, Black," recorded by the later lineup of the band in 1990. Mercer's voice is noticeably different from his decade-old self, but it's an enthusiastic rendition not too far out of place.

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