Feelies Get the Pulse Racing : Alternative Rock Band’s ‘Crazy Rhythms’ Tap into Agitation of the Times

After a decade of being heralded by college radio listeners, New York scenesters and almost every pop critic on the planet, the Feelies have practically come to define what alternative rock stands for: an individualist point of view, a distinct sound, a new way of looking at things. So you can see why guitarist Bill Million was a tad worried recently when the band wasput on a bill in Atlanta with the epitome of dead horse Southern rockers--one (gulp) Wet Willie.

“I walked out into the crowd before we played,” Million recalled earlier this week, “and thought to myself, ‘oh, this is going to be a very weird experience.’ (The place) was loaded with middle-aged couples and their kids. But somewhere along the line there must have been a turnover because by the time we came on, they were totally into it, dancing to us, being really boisterous. It felt great.”

Truth is, there might not have been any turnover at all. The Feelies--who play the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano tonight--simply might have accomplished what their music sets out to do: drive those who hear it into a frenzy. On their fourth, latest and possibly best record, “Time For a Witness” (A&M;), the mania begins immediately and doesn’t ever stop.

But--and this may be the key to the middle-aged dancers scenario--it’s a well-planned, mature kind of mania. No declamatory rhetoric, no show-offy antics from these extraordinarily unflamboyant Haledon, N.J., residents. No placating of short-term entertainment whims.

Just circular chord patterns that try to pass the stress test by standing up to the provocative, insistent and cascading beats that have been the Feelies’ trademark since their inception. “Crazy rhythms,” they called them then, but they’re decidedly logical. And, at their most intense, they’re a genuinely powerful force.

There is some kind of rush--part physical, part mental--that occurs when the Feelies’ interplay begins to stack up and prod mercilessly at the structures of the songs. Done poorly, all this can chart a course to a little place called Nowhere Fast. But when everything kicks in (and the band’s track record is pretty good), it’s like watching a radiator overheat or Sununu take George’s jet for another ride. You start biting your nails.

“The tension you’re talking about comes from the fact that we actively push the music along,” Million said. “We literally force it as a group until it gives you that sensation. Our manager has said that he can’t stand in the same room and listen to us sometimes, because he thinks we’re going to explode.”

At the crux of this process is a certain manipulation of anxiety. (The first song on the band’s first record was called “The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness.”) Like the best jazz players, the Feelies realize how useful tension and release can be, how the former can pique interest and the latter can satisfy deeply. Tapping into the agitation of our times to let us blow off some steam--it’s a Feelies forte.

There are those who maintain that the crescendos toward which the band builds never really erupt, that the rise-to-fall is all a bit of a tease. “Well, we certainly hit limitations along the way,” Million allowed. “That was one of the main reasons we took such a long break after our first album: We were locked into this high speed, rhythm-only kind of thing that wasn’t satisfying all our members.

“These days the group is far more open. We realize there are a lot more possibilities for us, and I think you can hear it on the new record.”

Sure enough, the album’s “What She Said,” with its slide guitar smears, ventures outside the muscular minimalism on which Feelies tunes have long depended. Still, at this late date, the band’s game plan is firmly established, and it has little to do with catchy choruses.

One might think that in a pop climate receptive to the stripped-down beats of hip-hop, the mesh of riffs (from guitarist Glenn Mercer and bassist Brenda Sauter) and drum patterns (from trap player Stanley Demeski and percussionist Dave Weckerman) would have some kind of conformist currency. But they still sound fairly drastic.

And they still sound like the Velvet Underground, too. “Writers always write that, but fans never mention it to us,” Million mused. “I think that when people talk about the Velvet Underground, they too easily miss the big picture. There’s no band that sounds like the Velvets, not to me at least. They sang about some pretty dark stuff, and the Feelies don’t. We’re much more optimistic.”

No indictment: There are worse bands to remind listeners of than the Velvets, but the Feelies do just that. The new record’s “Decide” is a deft refraction of the V.U.’s “Train ‘Round the Bend,” and Mercer’s nasal vocal style has followed in Lou Reed’s footsteps more than once. A cynic might say that the Feelies’ love of pulse stems from the proto-mantra inflections of the Velvets’ “Here She Comes Now.” But that’s a parlor game that you could play with many bands.

And besides, if you want to play spot the influence, there’s plenty of Bo Diddley lurking in the Feelies’ kinetic sprawl.

In any case, “Time for a Witness” confirms many of the singular notions that the Feelies’ music has been positing for years, and it turns a few corners too. Both expansive and concentrated (“we tape our rehearsal jams, look for key moments of interaction, and then cut them out, make them as concise as possible,” Million said), both instinctive and arranged, it continues to confound the mind with its dichotomies, and to please the body with its keening sweeps of sound.

What else could have gotten those middle-agers off their duffs?

* The Feelies and Firehose play tonight at 8 at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $15. Information: (714) 496-8930.