The Feelies

Sat., April 17, 8 p.m., $24-$34, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400, worldcafelive.com.

by K. Ross Hoffman

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Published: Apr 13, 2010

rock/pop

The Feelies never enjoyed the early-aughts adulation accorded to plenty of their class-of-'80 post-punk peers (Gang of Four, Joy Division, Talking Heads, PiL), but lately they've started getting their due. Following a few tentative returns to the stage in 2008 (even in its heyday, shows were notoriously infrequent, often on holidays), Bar/None reissued their early albums last fall, most notably the landmark debut Crazy Rhythms, nearly 30 years after its initial release and 20 since its most recent CD pressing. But it's no great surprise that The Feelies' influence (and acknowledgement) should come about in a somewhat indirect fashion: The Jerseyites have always beaten a singular, laconically quirky path, from their understated, un-punkish button-down visual sense to their unmistakable musical approach — a clean, hyper-precise twin-guitar front line, playful yet powerfully insistent percussion parts and plenty of Beatles covers, coalescing in a hypnotically simple, stripped-down trance-rock that swells from meditative drones to frantic, jittery abandon.

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