FeedtimeThe Aberrant Years (Sub Pop)
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Feedtime disbanded in 1989, shortly after the release of Suction, on the eve of what would’ve been their first stateside tour. I was a huge fan of the band in their initial incarnation, and I didn’t even remember they’d made a fifth album—Billy, cut with a different drummer for Amphetamine Reptile in 1996—until I started writing this. To be honest, I probably hadn’t played any of their records in two decades. But revisiting Feedtime’s music—especially their second album, Shovel—instantly reminded me why I’d loved it.
For the most part Feedtime only did one thing, but they did it well. On their third album, the covers collection Cooper-S, they give the same treatment to songs by the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, X (the Australian one), the Stooges, and the Easybeats, among others—every tune, regardless of its melody, dynamics, or tempo shifts, gets flattened into a brutally one-dimensional howl. In some ways Feedtime worked like the Oval software Markus Popp would develop in the 90s, which could transform any recording into Oval music—these guys could turn anything into Feedtime music using just muscle and bone.
Free Again includes gorgeous, exquisitely crafted tunes—among them the title track, “The EMI Song (Smile for Me),” and “The Happy Song,” one of several redone Box Tops obscurities—as well as raunchy R&B numbers such as the funky “All I Really Want Is Money,” a dig at the Box Tops’ management, who took home most of the band’s earnings. There’s also a high-energy cover of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and a twisted medley of the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar” and James Brown’s “I Got the Feelin’.” The liner notes acknowledge Chilton’s ambivalence about these recordings, and given how far they fall short of his best work, it’s easy to see why he felt that way. Despite some real moments of pleasure and humor, Free Again is a minor collection—a snapshot of an underdocumented moment in Chilton’s development as an artist.
