It's tempting to call 1980's New Jersey band the Trypes a Feelies side project. All five current Feelies were involved at some point, and the only record the Trypes ever released-- 1984's 4-song The Explorers Hold EP-- has a distinct Feelies vibe. It's filled with the Zen strumming and Moe Tucker-ish beats of late-80s Feelies albums The Good Earth and Only Life. One song, the rolling "The Undertow", even showed up later in very similar form on Only Life.
But the Trypes were more than an offshoot. They started as a quartet with no Feelies members, and when Feelies guitarist/singer Glenn Mercer joined, his other band had technically broken up and he was just looking to play drums. More importantly, the Trypes were part of an overlapping circle of N.J. outfits-- including the Feelies, Yung Wu, and the Willies-- whose work had a casual, familial feel. Often it sounded like they were making music for each other rather than an audience.
That's why the title Music for Neighbors-- taken from a series these bands put on at Haledon, N.J., bar the Peanut Gallery-- is such a perfect name for Acute's selection from the Trypes archives. Alongside The Explorers Hold EP, the LP-plus-digital-download set collects demos, live performances, and practice sessions at Hoboken's legendary Maxwell's club. This previously unreleased material is compelling mostly because of its personal, homemade aura. Unpolished and unassuming, it creates an apt portrait of a band that, as Mercer explains in the liner notes, "sprung out of a series of weekly, informal, neighborhood gatherings, playing sparse and simple music on a local level for our own enjoyment."
Sparseness and simplicity permeate all of the Trypes' songs, which were often built on a two-chord strum, up-down organ chords, or a repetitive beat. Mercer cites the group's fusing of "the harder, New York edge of the Velvet Underground and the softer, West Coast vibe of the psychedelic bands," and you can hear that combo throughout, plus some baroque folk leanings. But more interesting than the Trypes' genre mixing is their knack for making every note sound intimate and lived-in. It helps that these recordings are rather lo-fi, giving Music for Neighbors a personal atmosphere not far from Half Japanese or the chord-organ tunes of Daniel Johnston. But this isn't primitive music-- the Trypes prove equally adept at gentle ballads, grinding dirges, classic-rock covers, and a seven-minute jam called "Life History" that sounds like the Feelies channeling Can.
Such range was apparently easy for musicians so familiar with each other. As Elbrus Kelemet sings on "Force of Habit", "We get together everyday at this time/ It has been so long now it's hard to say why/ Must be a habit or we wouldn't go on." They actually didn't go on that long, ending when the Feelies reformed and the original members morphed into the still-active Speed the Plough. But at its best, Music for Neighbors evokes a parallel world, one in which the Trypes still meet up regularly to make more songs for each other.
