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For the annual 4th of July show at Battery Park, headliners SONIC YOUTH specifically picked THE FEELIES, newly reunited and fresh from two warm-up shows at Maxwells, because of The Feelies’ proclivity for playing on national holidays. With that said, before the Maxwells show a few nights prior, they hadn’t played a show in 17 years. All reports from the Maxwells show were excellent (and the setlists look amazing, too), but we were curious to find out for ourselves if The Feelies still had it.
As it turns out, it took them a few songs to get into it, but once they did, they were firing on all cylinders. Focusing mostly on material from their last 3 albums The Good Earth, Only Life and Time for a Witness as opposed to their debut Crazy Rhythms, they also included two new songs in their too short, 45-minute set. Still, they did manage to play a few tracks from Crazy Rhythms (“Raised Eyebrows” and “Fa Ce-La”) and even came back out for an encore, partly due to the encouragement from the WFMU DJ who was emceeing the show. Nevertheless, it was awesome for an opening band to even get an encore and the two additional songs (the aforementioned “Fa Ce-La” and their cover of WIRE’s “Outdoor Miner”) were a welcome treat, especially in light of the fact that their set was far shorter than the Maxwells shows. For instance, I would’ve loved to hear “Original Love” and “Deep Fascination”, both of which they played at Maxwells. Still, it was an utter treat to hear classics like “Higher Ground” and “Doin’ It Again”.
Now that headliners Sonic Youth showed that they once again have impeccable taste in opening bands, it was time for them to hit the stage and as always, they were great. I think that playing all of Daydream Nation last year must have really sunk in as they played nearly a third of that amazing record. We got a ferocious “Silver Rocket,” “The Sprawl,” ”’Cross the Breeze” and even “Hey Joni” as well as 2/3 of the closing “Trilogy”. The renditions of some of these songs were far superior to the show at last year’s Pitchfork Music Festival. Clearly, playing some of the lesser-played material from this album has made them considerably tighter.
Otherwise, the set was a nice, condensed, hour and a half long version of their entire career. The 2006 reissue of their self-titled Sonic Youth mini-Lp also must have affected the live set as they opened with that record’s “She Is Not Alone”. The set also included other early ‘80s material like “World Looks Red” (which also makes an appearance on the recent Hits Are For Squares compilation) and “Making the Nature Scene”, part of the 1st encore. Their 1992 album Dirty was also represented by “Drunken Butterfly” and “100 %”, the last song they performed to finish off the second encore. That song even featured the type of crowd-surfing that was then associated with all things “alternative”, though of course it started out in hardcore punk and slowly made its way into the mainstream (much like how NIRVANA’s Nevermind made “alternative” mainstream, come to think of it).
Still, the show wasn’t entirely about nostalgia. One of the most memorable songs they played during the main set was “Jams Run Free”. This song, as well as “Pink Steam” (which they also played) is from their most recent album, the excellent Rather Ripped. The song featured KIM GORDON’s memorable vocal performance along with her equally as memorable circular-motion dancing.
The photos above were taken by JASON BERGMAN for Brooklyn Vegan and can be seen here and here. You can see more of his photos here. The photos are used with permission.
