Glenn Mercer: Incidental Hum
Making his solo instrumental debut, Feelies co-founder Glenn Mercer taps into a zone on Incidental Hum that his veteran band charted a course for after 1980’s Crazy Rhythms but never quite arrived at. Recovering the fuzzed-guitar harmonies of The Willies, The Feelies’ under-documented early ‘80s spinoff, the 15 tracks on Incidental Hum likewise recall the pleasing atmospheric drama of Brian Eno’s early pop LPs. Fittingly, Mercer’s
cover of Eno’s eternally soaring “Here Come the Warm Jets” acts as a kind of thematic launching point for a rich collection of gentle guitar afterburn (“Moss Point”), spaghetti-western excursions (“Twenty-Nine Palms”), drum-machine exotica (“Kara Sea”) and even Devo-like squonk (“Yuma”). Sold initially as a CD-R at Feelies shows, Incidental Hum provides a decades-later missing link for Feelies fans yearning for more trips into the cosmos with the favorite sons (and daughter) of Haledon, N.J.