Ask anyone in the music industry how they plan to sell an act to the world, and they’ll tell you one thing: “Get as much information about the act to the public!” That’s why if you can get a singer on a radio show chatting about what brand of soda they like to have with their sandwiches, you’re good. But if you can get them on national television, revealing personal details about their love life, that’s even better.
These tactics are going to continue to be used, but I argue that they’re not meant to do the bands and performers any good in the long run. People get bored. There are only so many tales to tell. And, after all, many of the greatest albums ever made, the kind that people collect for decades after their initial release, feel like they arrived out of nowhere and sound like a minor miracle.
Fuzzy Feelings’ “Under the Pit” is a strange little lo-fi, dark pop-rock record that brings to mind bands like Pulsars, or even the legendary Neutral Milk Hotel’s second album. It’s while listening to those hooks, trying to escape the songs by any means necessary, that you wonder how someone could be both this creative and this weird.
That’s a rare and nearly perfect combination, however. Just listen to the opening song, “Powerline,” which sounds just like Misfits being asked to record a song by The Cars on the cheapest reel-to-reel recorder that the record label can afford.
And, strain your ears more for gloriously well-crafted songs like “Campaign,” which, in a separate review, I dared call a “perfect, haunting, enigmatic pop song.” Or, turn your attention to the 50s-inspired “Soul Seeker,” with a bridge so good that it immediately becomes the focus of the song.
While you’re busy scrambling to answer the question “Who the hell is this band?”, also, ponder for a second the fact that the world’s top record labels may not employ the world’s premier pop songwriters. Naturally, this will make you sad for a second, but it ought to, just as well, make you hopeful for all the treasures waiting for you out there in the dimly lit corners of the internet, where lo-fi rock is kept.
Where does it leave us? Knowing little about Fuzzy Feelings other than one simple, but essential detail: these are all fantastic and bizarre pop songs. If this one-man band doesn’t do anything ever again, “Under the Pit” will be destined to remain a small classic, the kind that future generations will be just as amazed to have found.
