Bar None US Vinyl & CDs

Review: You need real confidence to take on a back catalogue of The Velvet Underground's caliber. Of course, it definitely helps if your band were contemporaries of sorts, knocked about in similar circles in the heady New York City scenes of the early-mid-1970s, and subscribed to Village Voice (and impressed their editorial team even before you got signed). All this means you don't redo tracks with borrowed nostalgia or vibes, but instead have first hand experience of what helped make them what they were at the time. So here we are then, Big Apple alt rock & rollers The Feelies turning their hands to the work of Lou Reed et al, paying homage to an outfit that had a huge influence on them in the first place. And they do a fine job, straddling the delicate line between reworking and completely rethinking anthems from 'Venus in Furs' to 'Sunday Morning', carefully managing to make each their own without forgetting what made these songs so incredible in the first place.