The Feelies “In Between”
If ever there was a band that was born to disappear, it was The Feelies. They are the cult band that, for over forty years, were not a band much more than they were a band. They average an album every five or six years. They retire, reconstitute and play under new names or assumed names, sometimes with the same members and sometimes with a tweak of the line-up. They prefer surprise shows on national holidays to well promoted tours. They write songs about nothing. And having nothing to say. And about waiting for something to happen but knowing that it will never actually happen. They seem completely disinterested in every single thing about being in a band except for the part where the band gets together and plays songs. And, for every single one of those reasons, and countless more, they were my absolute favorite band in the world for the better part of the 1990s.
In spite of their legendary unpredictability, The Feelies are also somehow the most consistent band I know. Every song on every one of their albums is based on the same two or three chord progressions. The rhythms vary. The volume varies. But the basic chassis has never, ever changed. Their radically uniform oeuvre is built on the assumption that The Beatles and The Stones achieved everything that was necessary from Rhythm and Blues music. And that there have been only three useful amendments since their constitution -- the “on the beat” syncopation of The Velvet Underground, the blistering drone of The Stooges and the prosaic suburbanism of The Modern Lovers.
To love The Feelies is to believe in their austerity. It’s to believe that transformation is a fool's errand. That change worked for The Beatles and Dylan and possibly Prince, but for nobody else. That Bowie’s turns were more theatrical than successful. That Madonna’s shifts were provocation, not musical form. Change is hard. And, in music, it often comes from desperation and with unintended consequences. The Feelies knew this in their bones from the day they were born. They arrived, in the late 1970s, fully formed. They had one mode that was somewhere in between the second and third Velvets records and another mode that would speed up and freak out like The Stooges. And that was it. And it was perfect. And, so, why change?
I first discovered the band around 1989, after their third LP, “Only Life” and before their fourth, and what I presumed would be their final album, “Time for a Witness.” Like many of my favorite records from that time, I was turned onto “Crazy Rhythms, ” The Feelies 1980 debut, by Robert Christgau, the self-titled “Dean of Rock Critics.” Upon first encounter, I was not sure if the album was even technically an album or if the songs were, properly, songs. The words were mumbled, sometimes with the two singers talking over each other. There were long periods of silence in between. There weren’t choruses so much as offhanded thesis statements that were repeated. As a teen, it was mostly inscrutable. Even the cover, with its portrait of the nerdy young men, unconcerned and disaffected -- even that photo seemed perched on the thin line between great meaning and meaninglessness. There were certainly clues, nods to Lou Reed and Jonathan Richman and Brian Eno and, undoubtedly, some avant-garde stuff that I was unaware of. But, none of that really mattered. Because the sound of that band on that album said everything I had wondered about but couldn’t articulate. And it did so with the fewest possible notes and words. With minor variances in tempo and tone that feel momentous. And with an insistence that it was saying nothing and that — even when it was saying something — it was actually all meaningless.
Although I was young and unschooled in philosophy and semiotics, I understood what The Feelies signified. The sameness of their music and the opacity of their image appealed to me. But, they were also, intentionally, evasive. So, the logical part of my mind needed more information. Before the internet, however, context was hard to come by. The Feelies were far from famous. And they seemed to willfully avoid publicity. So, while reviews were lavishing in their praise, primary source information was virtually nonexistent. I eventually found old copies of The New York Rocker and The Village Voice. But interviews and essays only complicated matters. Founding Feelies Glenn Mercer and Bill Million sounded genuinely indifferent to notions of audience and marketplace. Praise was politely received but not useful to them. Fame and fortune sounded like a hassle. Based on what I could discern, the band was really, fully, truly just a bunch of people from New Jersey, who had a shared sensibility and who liked playing music together, and especially close to home, among friends. I could not say with certainty whether it was all a pretentious put on or whether it was genuine disaffectation.
Across several decades, infrequent output and outside forces at work, The Feelies maintained radical devotion to their principles. When Peter Buck of R.E.M. opted to produce their second album in 1986 — years, permutations and vacations after their semi-famous debut — The Feelies were still unmoved. They slowed down a notch. They plugged in less. But the chords and the ideas were still precisely the same. Two years later, when College Rock was becoming “a thing” and they were signed to a major label and asked to work with an outside producer, they did not flinch. And, in 1991, when they released what we all suspected was their swan song, they just turned the volume up half a notch and doubled down on everything else they had said and done during the previous decade. It was like Waiting for fucking Godot. And I loved every second or every song of it.
As a relative latecomer to the party, I only saw the band perform live one time during their first run. It was 1991, in support of “Time for a Witness” and it was, appropriately, in New Jersey. Even then, with the benefits of major record label tour support and an adoring, hometown crowd, The Feelies performed as though they were the only five people in the room. They played everything in double time. It was hard to imagine that songs like “Fa Ce La” and “Raised Eyebrows” could get any faster, but then they did. It was hard to imagine that the rhythm guitarist and drummer could physically keep up, but they did. It was all breathless. There was no on-stage banter. No jokes or stories. The crowd squealed approval for over an hour, but the band did not respond. Every song kind of sounded like the one before or the one that followed. Just faster or louder or both. Then they closed with a cover song, their only acknowledgement of any outside world, and they left the stage. Within months I learned that they had been dropped from their label. I was certain that I would never see or hear from The Feelies again. They were Halley’s Comet. Their appearance was the freak event. Their disappearance was the norm.
Years passed. I still listened to The Feelies, but had moved on from my mourning. They were as dead as The Beatles to me. I had their four studio albums and an EP and was grateful for that. Occasionally, however, I would check in to see what the former members were up to. It seemed that most of them were still in New Jersey, just working and living lives. Guitarist Bill Million moved to Florida for a job as some sort of high end locksmith at Disneyland. Oddly, that made a lot of sense to me. Stanley Demenski was the drummer in Luna, which also made good sense. Lead guitarist and singer, Glenn Mercer was harder to locate. It seemed that he was just messing around in some local bands, supporting friends, playing guitar. But, in 1994, I got a lead. Mercer had started a new band with former Feelies percussionist Dave Weckerman. It was called Wake Ooloo and they had a new album out. I could not believe it. I assumed that if I waited one more minute, that the album would simply dissolve into vapor. So, I did not walk. I ran two blocks to my local CD store in Providence, Rhode Island, and bought a copy of “Hear No Evil.”
Wake Ooloo’s debut sounds a good deal like “Time For a Witness,” The Feelies’ album from 1991, except with all of the dials turned up. It’s more Stooges than Velvets. But it’s still entirely the product of a singular vision. It was not as great as Mercer’s former band, but it was great enough. I listened to it on repeat for a couple of months and eventually saw ads for a couple of upcoming concerts. Giddy with anticipation, I took the train down to New York and saw the band play, first in the basement of the old Time Cafe and, then, in Murray Hill at the Rodeo Bar. That first show was fast, tight and ear-splittingly loud. I have no idea if or how the restaurant patrons tolerated the volume, but I was happy with the ringing that lingered for a couple of days. The band scratched my Feelies’ itch without denigrating any legacy. That second show, however, proved to be a real problem.
Rodeo Bar was a mid-eastside institution in New York for a couple of decades. It was a below average bar with below average food that would generally book above average bands and occasionally hook a truly great Country Swing group or country-ish singer songwriter. Jimmie Dale Gilmour or some overqualified band from Austin might show up there to a crowd of young professionals and a smattering of true believers. New York was never a great Country music city, but it was especially unloving in the 90s. By that point, The Rodeo Bar relied on fake IDs and weak margaritas to thrive. Wake Ooloo was the exact opposite of The Rodeo Bar in 1994.
I arrived at that concert two hours early. I was half convinced that the listing was a typo and half convinced it was a joke. I didn’t drink at the time so I sidled up to the bar and drowned myself in Pepsis and overcooked babyback ribs. Around 8pm, to my complete astonishment, Glenn Mercer, in sunglasses, Dave Weckerman, in Dad jeans, and the rest of Wake Ooloo walked into the bar. They lugged in all their own equipment and fastidiously set up their amps and mics. A couple dozen others ambled up towards the stage, though it was unclear if they were fans or just curious patrons. And then, at 9pm sharp, the band tore into their first song. Rodeo Bar was built for music and dancing but, apparently, not for volume. The glasses rattled. Drinkers covered their ears. To me, it sounded deafening, but good. To the rest of the people in the Rodeo Bar, it clearly did not. After the first song, a manager walked up to the band and whispered something in the singer’s ear. The singer did not react in any discernible way. Maybe a shrug but definitely not a word. A moment later, the band started their second song and got the same reaction. The manager returned and whispered something. Glenn Mercer then unplugged his guitar and mic, signaled something to his band, and said, “See ya.” Within five minutes, the band was packed up and gone.
If The Feelies were a band that had nothing to say and did want to be heard, Wake Ooloo was, at least partially, different. The lyrics were slightly less obtuse, the chords had the slightest variance and the guitars were turned up past ten. You could not not hear Wake Ooloo. It was a risk for Glenn Mercer, the guy who had experimented for twenty years with long silences, quiet drones and willful meaninglessness. From 1976, when The Feelies began, and 1991, when they went away, he tried virtually nothing new. He was anti-transformation. He was probably not pro-regression. But, he was intentionally arrested. He saw no benefit in change or progress. But, on that night at The Rodeo Bar in 1994, he was trying something new. And he got punished for it. He exited with the look of a man thinking, “why the fuck did I even bother.”
Amazingly -- illogically -- Wake Ooloo persisted for two more albums, before they shuttered in 1996. By then, Mercer was five years removed from The Feelies. I was relatively certain that I’d never hear from him or his former band again. Everything had been said. It was quite a career in music. R.E.M. and Yo La Tengo are perhaps The Feelies’ most famous acolytes. And although The Feelies may not have an album as beautiful as “Automatic for the People” or as epic as “I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One,” neither R.E.M. or Yo La Tengo made a statement as clearly brilliant as “Crazy Rhythms.” By the end of the 90s, and in spite of appearing in countless “best of” lists, The Feelies were entirely gone and partially forgotten. Perhaps this was the plan from the very beginning. A few thousand of us still dreamed of their return, like something from a science fiction novel. But that was probably it. Their thesis proved true: you’re always waiting for something to happen, expecting something to happen, but nothing ever happens.
Right around The Feelies passing, though, came a rash of reunions -- especially from Indie and Post-Punk bands. Television returned in 1992. Then Wire and The Pixies and The Replacements and, seemingly, every other great band we’d assumed were historical, if not mythological. At the time, I was working in music, so I sent out a couple of flares. In 2007, I managed to license the rights to The Feelies’ “Fa Ce La / Raised Eyebrows” single for a limited 7” repress. The thousand copies we made sold out quickly. Later that year, emboldened, I reached out to the person listed online as their manager (though I wondered why they needed a manager) to see if I could design and produce a new run of Feelies t-shirts. It was perfect timing, he told me. The band was about to start doing some warm up shows at Maxwells and probably needed some new merch. I could feel my heart beating faster. Bill Million was back in Jersey and the band planned a couple of bigger shows in the summer or fall of 2008. I pretended that this information was minor. On the surface, I just needed a “yes” for the t-shirts. But, inside, I felt as though I’d been given proof of Bigfoot. It didn’t sound like a conspiracy theory. Halley’s comet was many decades away. But, something had happened.
There are countless amazing things about The Feelies’ reunion. For one, that it happened at all. For another, that it has been kind of ho-hum in its reliability. When I first got wind of it, it seemed impossible. But now, more than a decade later, it seems almost logical. The period between 1991 and 2008 was the ultimate disappearing act for a band that was prone to long pauses and sabbaticals. It also allowed the band to hit reset and to return without the expectations of change or progress. Certainly long time fans and curious newcomers expected the band to look older. But, we also not so secretly hoped that the band was musically frozen in ember. We pay, in part, for the nostalgia. We want to hear the band we remembered. We don’t want the new stuff. We want the same stuff. In this way, it was all entirely logical. The Feelies -- a band that never transformed and barely evolved -- was well suited for a reunion.
Between 2008 and 2011, I saw them play live about a half dozen times. They sounded exactly like the band I saw in 1991. Honestly, aside from some grey hair, they looked the same as well. There were no niceties. No reminiscing. They were socially withholding but sonically ecstatic. They played everything we wanted to hear. And they played it fast. They’d cover The Velvets and The Modern Lovers. They’d play alongside Yo La Tengo. In 2011, they even released a new album, appropriately entitled “Here Before.” Not only did this new album -- their first in twenty years -- not cover new ground, it seemed to proudly step backwards. Musically, “Here Before” had the plain, laconic quality that “Only Life” had in 1989. The same chords. The same volume and pace. Faster than “The Good Earth” but far less rushed than “Crazy Rhythms.” It opened with a winking acknowledgment of their unlikely return. And then they basically played and said nothing very new for forty minutes. But they played and said it perfectly. It was true. They were not a myth. The Feelies -- the actual Feelies -- had returned.
Over each of the next five years, the band would do a bunch of shows around New York and New Jersey and the occasional spot at a prestigious festival. It all had the look of a fun, nominally lucrative excuse for old friends to get together and play their old songs. “Here Before” didn’t seem like a lark, but it did feel a bit like a fluke. Even in their prime, The Feelies never rushed into the studio. In their mid-fifties, another new album seemed both unlikely and unnecessary. In 2015, Bill Million told WBUR:
“The band really doesn’t like to travel so much for the most part. We probably could make a reasonable amount of money touring, but to what end? It’s not worth it to us. Not to say we wouldn’t do it, but if there is anyone in the band that doesn’t really want to do something, that’s the decision.”
Reading that interview, it was hard to fathom how the band had ever made a single album, much less that they would make another one. They had day jobs and grown kids. Moreover, it appeared that they were the sort of institution that would kill a new idea over any objection. It made perfect sense that they never changed. It made no virtually sense that they would ever progress. And yet, at the end of 2016, Bar / None Records announced that, in early 2017, The Feelies would be releasing “In Between,” their sixth studio album. As with all things Feelies, it seemed that the older gang was still predictably unpredictable.
“In Between” uses the same parts as every Feelies’ album that precedes it -- the unstoppable jangle, the percussive clicks and bells and the riffs swiped from “Sister Ray” and “Foggy Notion.” Almost everything here is familiar and, frankly, anything else would be unexpected. When the album opens, we hear the slight crackle of fire, the chirp of a bird and the briefest drone of guitar. For an instant, it sounds exactly like “The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness” but then cuts to a quiet, unvaried, two chord strum. It’s the same chords from “Crazy Rhythms,” just played on an acoustic guitar and stripped bare. Whereas, “Here Before” harkened back to “Only Life,” the first track on “In Between” sounds like a demo for “The Good Earth,” the band’s sophomore album. The vocals are so quiet that you wonder if the recording was even intended for release. Eventually, a beat appears, followed by a second rhythm. There is something both private and timeless about this recording -- like the band gathering in 1983, recording to a cassette tape, mostly for fun. But somehow, near the four minute mark, as it comes to a close, you realize that the jangle has set its hook. You’re hypnotized. You don’t want it to end. It’s the same trick they’ve been doing for forty years.
The first three songs on “In Between” all have the feeling of a warm up. They’re modest, patient and highly familiar. Ten minutes in, you get the feeling that The Feelies speak a language that contains a fraction of the words of a typical language. But, also, you sense that is all that they need to express themselves. They recycle ideas from their previous albums and simply restate them more slowly, more quietly and more knowingly. And, as with all great minimalist art, these tiny variations make the biggest impact.
The first pivot occurs on “Flag Days,” four tracks in. The guitar turns just slightly sinister. And when Glenn Mercer sings about people talking but nobody listening -- as he does on every Feelies’ album -- you catch a whiff of irritation or resentment or something. The Feelies are experts in playing disaffected narrators. But, to me, this sounds more like the singer who walked off the stage at Rodeo Bar in 1994. Intellectually, he knows that nothing matters. But the music has moved him inches closer to his heart. And, as if to prove it, the band shifts into a straight Power Pop hook in the chorus and sings “hey now / it’s all right / alright.” Whereas the first songs sounded intentionally underwhelming (though lovely), this one is fully realized. It’s the sound of a middle-aged band, with a new perspective on their long-held existentialism. It’s as if they are saying, “We were clever enough to know that it’s all meaningless, except this -- the joy of playing music and making these sounds together. Maybe that matters.”
On the second half of “In Between,” the dials are all slightly turned up. “Been Replaced” strips down “Sister Ray” and turns it sideways. In its story, the singer goes out to a show, hears the same thing he’s heard a thousand times before and wonders why he’s so bothered. But, here’s the thing — he is bothered. He’s annoyed that he cared enough to go see the band. He’s annoyed that he feels replaced. It’s subtle. And kind of mumbled. But, if you listen, it’s there. And, as if to press the issue, they follow “Been Replaced” with “Gone Gone Gone.” The guitars stay plugged in and pivot from “Sister Ray” to “Foggy Notion.” There’s more kick in the beat. And there are offhanded lines that sound both profound and tossed aside. There’s a sense that, while the younger Feelies wondered “why bother,” the fifty-something version wonders “why did I fucking bother?” The distance between the two is subtle, in the same way that the distance between their songs can be almost imperceptible. But, whereas “In Between” started like a whisper, by track eight there is momentum that borders on fury. It’s all the same chords. But, we’re miles from where we started.
Following “Gone Gone Gone,” The Feelies decelerate. The jangle remains confident, but less furious. And then, on “Make it Clear,” they close the same way they opened. Whispered vocals. A gentle strum. Some bells ringing along in the background. Everything syncopated on the beat. And basically the same chords we started with, just a pinch sweeter. It fades out precisely as it faded in. Were these actually new songs? Was this really even an album? Was it ten minutes or an hour since it started? As much as they were known for their rhythms, The Feelies were always timeless. Late. Early. Fast. Slow.
The final fade of “Make it Clear,” however, proves to be a false ending. Moments later, the band plugs back in for an encore cover. It’s something The Feelies have always done. On “Crazy Rhythms,” they added a cover of “Paint it Black” (The Stones) to the end. On “Only Life,” they cover “What Goes On” (The Velvets). And on “Time for a Witness,” they do “Real Cool Time” (The Stooges). For track eleven of “In Between,” they cover themselves. They reprise the opening, title track. But they play it heavy and loud. The same two chords. The same barely audible words. But played full on electric. It drones. There’s feedback. The percussion sounds like a broken piano. It’s white light and white heat slow cooked and distilled. It’s Yo La Tengo without the romanticism. It’s purpose it clear -- to drive straight until there’s no more road. Until the wheels fall off and there’s nowhere to go. And, nine minutes in, that’s exactly what happens.
There’s an uncanny, “Benjamin Buttons” quality about The Feelies. Many others have said something along these lines. It is true that “In Between” frequently returns to the good earth the band inhabited in the 1980s. But, words like “return” or “regress” or, even, “reunion” don’t effectively apply to this band. Though they grew older and occasionally apart, there is no evidence that they ever left their place and time. It seems less likely that their newest album is archeological and more likely that they simply remained in that place and time. New Jersey 1980. The monotony of it. The weirdness of it. The dullness of it.
The Feelies didn’t need to come back. They didn’t need to make a record. They said everything. Over and over. And with the fewest chords possible. But I think I needed them to come back. To confirm that it was real to begin with. And that it happened the first time around. And that I wasn’t dreaming or hypnotized. And now I know. And, if I had to guess, I would say that they are not done. That they will always be strumming that sound and clicking those clacks, on the beat. So, I’ll just wait around, even though I know nothing will really happen. Even when the next Feelies’ album is just one chord played slowly and quietly for 40 minutes. Even then it will still be happening. And I suspect it will happen forever.