Stream: Feels, ‘Post Earth’

Kevin Bronson on February 18th, 2019

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Contrary to what its title might infer, FEELS’ sophomore album “Post Earth” is not all about the end time, just dialed in to the current one. The L.A. quartet (singer-guitarists Laena Geronimo and Shannon Lay, bassist Amy Allen and drummer Michael Perry Rudes) vent on the sturm and drang via biting guitars and battering rhythms juxtaposed with airy vocals and harmonies. These songs are bullets with butterfly wings, to steal somebody else’s phrase.

From loud to soft, angular to undulating, structured to free-form, “Post Earth’s” highlight reel of grievances never lets you get comfortable. Nor should you. “If our wildest dreams came true,” Geronimo says, “the album would sound exciting to people while also inspiring awareness and action against hate, prejudice, greed, the destruction of our environment … apathy’s not cool and toppling oppression could be fun if we do it together.”

The quartet today unveiled the title track, a dire song that in 5 1/2 minutes encapsulates all of FEELS’ strengths. It unfolds serenely before clenching its fists and — with some shouts, an excursion of interwoven guitars on the bridge and some head-banging at the finish — sarcastically suggests we “embrace the new dystopia.”

“‘Post Earth’ is the fictional concept that there is a future for humanity after the Earth has been rendered uninhabitable by arrogant profiteers, who believe that human engineering can create a suitable environment to sustain fulfilling life elsewhere,” Geronimo explains. “There is no such thing. The song is addressed to those billionaire 1%-ers as their fate unfolds: as they leave their trash behind and take a rocket ship to their new home on Mars, only to arrive and face catastrophic horror.”

“Post Earth,” the follow-up to the quartet’s 2016 self-titled debut, is out Friday.

||| Stream: “Post Earth”