The Feelies

The Feelies come out of Haledon, New Jersey, and they play rock and roll like it's a nervous tic: guitars strummed so fast they blur into a drone, drums that skitter rather than pound, and a strange, coiled hush at the center of it all. Glenn Mercer and Bill Million started the band in 1976, drawing on the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed and the Beatles, and their first album, Crazy Rhythms, landed in 1980 and left a mark on R.E.M., who have said as much.

Brenda Sauter and Dave Weckerman joined the two founders in 1983 and 1984, and that lineup, with Stanley Demeski, made the records that followed. The Good Earth, in 1986, was co-produced by R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, one of the few times they let an outsider near the controls, and "Slipping Into Something" builds from a hushed strum into a churning, ecstatic rave-up. Only Life followed in 1988, and "Away" is the sound of a band that has made restraint its whole style.

They were regulars at Maxwell's in Hoboken all through the '80s, never sold many records, and still helped shape American indie rock. They broke up in 1992 and got back together in 2008, with new albums following in 2011 and 2017.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.