The Feelies were a bunch of geeky minimalists who are perhaps best known to at least this posterity from the fact that their debut record, Crazy Rhythms sneaked a place on Pitchfork’s best albums list of the 1980s. For my money though, like fuck it should have done – the album has some great percussion on it sure, but its mostly built around the rhythms with guitar drones stretched over it like rubber bands about to snap… on opener ‘The Boy With Perpetual Nervousness’ its a pretty powerful thing but boy does it get monotonous. No, its a good album but this is genius very much in pupae.

By contrast, second album The Good Earth has to be one of the most underrated albums of all time. I’d never even really heard of it before getting it packaged with Crazy Rhythms to review the two re-issues together but its really, really amazing. It takes all the sure listenably tense but ultimately aimless, buttoned-up-shirt-collar swell of the debut and turns it into something big and overpoweringly focused, that sounds like REM on a roadtrip gone backwards, falling asleep in a field and watching the sun set and then rise in reverse. Or, just “REM played on the wrong speed,” as a different observer noted. It really is a vastly superior record and more than that, it has to be ranked as a pretty much essential album for anyone who has ever demanded “just gimme indie rock.” Highlight of highlights has to be ‘The High Road’- rhythmically forceful, jangly, big, and poppy- the repetitiveness here is subtle but its still about as monotonous as a brick, it sort of changes up every now and then and even has a solo, of sorts, but really its just the same riff played over and over again, mostly, but you don’t really notice because that’s the song’s whole trick, I guess.

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Domino has announced plans to re-release the two classic albums by The Feelies, the much-loved group of hyperactive indie rockers from Haledon, New Jersey. Crazy Rhythms and The Good Earth will hit the shelves on the 26th of October and timed to follow The Feelies’ September All Tomorrows Parties festival appearance in New York, where they will play Crazy Rhythms in it’s entirety, this will be the first time both albums have been available in over a decade.

Bonus material including demos, b-sides, EP tracks and new live recordings will be included via download cards inserted into both LPs and CDs, which will also feature deluxe packaging with liner notes by Jim Derogatis and Jim Sullivan.

Crazy Rhythms tracklisting:
The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness
Fa Ce-La
Loveless Love
Forces At Work
Original Love
Everybody’s Got Something to Hide (Except Me and My Monkey)
Moscow Nights
Raised Eyebrows
Crazy Rhythms
BONUS DIGITAL DOWNLOAD CARD
Fa Ce-La (Single Version)
The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness (Demo Version)
Moscow Nights (Demo Version)
Crazy Rhythms (Live)
I Wanna Sleep In Your Arms (Live)

The Good Earth tracklisting:
On The Roof
The High Road
The Last Roundup
Slipping (Into Something)
When Company Comes
Let’s Go
Two Rooms
The Good Earth
Tomorrow Today
Slow Down
BONUS DIGITAL DOWNLOAD CARD
She Said She Said (Previously only available on EP)
Sedan Delivery (Previously only available on EP)
Slipping (Into Something) (Live)