2000 Great Songs #1469: The Rising Tide
Following the early-90s break-up of The Feelies (and before that band's welcome return in 2011), bassist Brenda Sauter, joined by her husband/guitarist Richard Barnes and drummer Chris O'Donovan, put together Wild Carnation. Their 1994 debut, Tricycle , maintains the pastoral jangle of mid-80s Feelies, though Sauter's gentle vocals and the folk-rock leanings bring it much closer in sound to Feelies-adjacent band Speed The Plough (in which all three Wild Carnation members have played over the years). It's a lovely album, as is its 2006 follow-up Superbus . Tricycle 's opening track, however, stands apart from most of the band's work. It's got a driving, electric groove, much closer in mood to that era's shoegaze records than the rest of the LP. Kinda invokes the fizzier tracks from the last gasp of the original Feelies run, 1991's Time For A Witness , with its layers of drone, kept pretty by Sauter's wispy singing. Cool track that deserves some ...
