366 Songs 265: How Does It Feel To Feel

One of the classic ’60s garage songs, there’s something so magnificently sludgy about “How Does It Feel,” in either of its versions (There are two, the UK and US mixes; I’m not entirely sure how that happened, nor why the US mix is the more feedback-laden and psych-rocky of the two). Of the two, I by far prefer the UK version – the one above – which is more tuneful, for me at least; there’s a strange focus on monotone in the American version that I can’t quite get my head around, even though I love the feedback and distortion on the lead guitar.

Lyric-wise, this is a mess of a song, the kind of sloppy psychedelia that people make fun of, but to complain about the words feels like missing the point. As the title suggests, this is a song that you feel; it’s the entire thing that you have to experience in one, and then make decisions based on that – the sludge, the simple “Woah, man, like the world” of the lyrics, the thuggish harmonies. It’s a song that literally asks you to not separate it into component parts, but let the whole just wash over you.

(Worth remembering: 1990s shoegazing band Ride did a cover of this, and managed to make the whole thing sound depressingly bland:

It’s so close, and yet so far…)

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