Here Before (LP)

The Feelies fifth album - their first for 20 years - reveals its pleasures slowly and unfussily. Bill Million and Glenn Mercer rarely raise their voices above a murmur, electric guitars pick careful paths across a bed of acoustics, and drums and bass motor along in a quiet background hum. Gradually, though, the eddies and whirlpools in this river make themselves apparent: Time Is Right's four-chord garage pop, the melancholy beauty of Morning Comes, the wistfulness of the title track - whose line "Everything looks familiar/ Like I've been here before" could be a description of the band easing themselves into writing and recording. The Feelies were a product of the New Jersey suburbs, and Here Before speaks to their origins: its distinctly pastoral feeling is tempered with a slight nervousness and tension, the sound of the city meeting the countryside. It's gorgeous.
4 / 5 The Guardian