My Top 1000 Songs #331: Raised Eyebrows

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Few albums better define the whole Jittery White Guy Music aesthetic that a friend once ascribed to my musical taste (inspiring the name of my rock & roll memoir and related writings) than the Feelies' 1980 debut Crazy Rhythms. And that vibe is perfectly encapsulated in the record's "Raised Eyebrows." Most of the song is vocals-free, potentially violating my general avoidance of instrumentals in this Top 1000 (a few exceptions aside); but some indecipherable voices do finally rear their heads by the final verse.

The song is, on its surface, as simple as they come, a repeated 3-chord riff, the tune's initial appeal lying in the frenetic, syncopated percussion of the late great Anton Fier (later of the Golden Palominos)... jittery in the extreme. But each verse grows increasingly colorful, the distinctive Television-inspired twin-guitar attack of Glenn Mercer and Bill Million gradually emerging, before being joined by those intertwined vocals. Like many of the best Feelies tracks, it's the slow-build from restraint to cathartic explosiveness that makes the song feel like an immersive adventure on every listen.

The long-running post-Fier dual-drummer band in action, 1987:

Still going strong, just a few months ago...