The Feelies
The Good Earth

THE REVIEW

Nervous pace, broken rhythms, relentless minimalism, controlled fury, and those guitars not even Television could match. That was "Crazy Rhythms," the first legendary album by the Feelies.

"The Good Earth," the second, however, is delicate and crystalline, a sort of jangle folk inside a magic bubble. At track one, so to speak, you're already smiling, such is the effect of that carefree and dreamy sound. Track two then ups the ante, to the point that you have no choice but to wander the hills at 30/40 kilometers per hour.

Three recovers a bit of the old fury. Four unrolls a clamorously Velvet-like digression of those that, really, you cannot resist. Fantastic...

Yes, fantastic, but, in the form of trivial sketches and enchanted idylls, the best is yet to come: the sound gets caught among the branches, the branches play with the light and what comes out are jangle embroideries not even matched by the nuns of Palo Alto.

Ah gentlemen, "The Good Earth" is a hypnotic intertwining of transparencies crossed by a warm sun, a sort of "wonderful and warm resonance," as the Quiet One would say, and the Quiet One knows a lot about it.

But now tell me, Lulù, tell me... how many years do you have?

Here you see, perhaps I've aged a little, but, to the post-punk splendor of that first legendary album, today I prefer these thousand shades between smile, melancholy, and transcendence. Call them if you will, good vibrations.

Ah, behind the console is Peter Buck of REM. That must mean something...

...

Ah, the Feelies will do well even after, actually very well...

Trallallà...