To compare Here Before with The Feelies’ earlier material is both unavoidable and unnecessary; whereas The Velvet Underground-meets-Talking Heads oddball art punk of Crazy Rhythms carved out a niche on the underside of the indie-pop generation, Here Before is more conventional record, rich in pop sensibility, but conservative in its exploration of the pop genre.
Yet the band’s irreverent empathy with punk, pop and garage continues to shine through. A track like Nobody Knows – replete with typical shuffling Feelies beat, sublime melody and cute lyrics – could hold its hand up high in 1982 against the likes of The Clean, while the shiny popalicious Should Be Gone is the perennial pop recipe for fun times, ice cream and adolescent wonder. Again Today drops into a slick groove as Glenn Mercer paints a threatening picture of angst and concern; When You Know throws caution to the wind, embracing a light garage tone that whisks you out into a Lincoln convertible and onto a suburban road.
After the soft tones of Later On, Way Down drops back into The Feelies’ pitch-perfect pop groove, packed full of mesmerising, yet subtle licks. Morning Comes has a vague hint of Ed Kuepper’s The Way I Make You Feel, while Change Your Mind locates The Go-Betweens within a New Jersey context before the title track glides effortlessly into a glistening soft-sand beach zone.
And while the rest of the record – from the folky Dunedin-esque Blue Skies, to the hip-thrusting garage-lite elegance of On And On through to the casual outro of So Far – is as subliminally attractive as the rhetorical flourishes of a cult leader, it’s the racing ’60s guitar lick in Time Is Right that sends shivers down your spine. The Feelies have been here before – Loveless Love from Crazy Rhythms, to be precise – and by golly fuck it’s good to have them back.
