Feel Good

The revelations of the monstrous abuse Tina Turner suffered at the hands of her then-husband Ike understandably tends to stain the duo’s output decades after its release, but the fact remains that taken on purely musical terms, Feel Good is not just a peak for Ike & Tina but for rock music as a whole. She made her reputation with the blistering, gospel-indebted intensity on display on the granite-hard opener “Chopper” and her vocal cords sound close to bursting on “Kay Got Laid (Joe Got Paid).” At this point in the duo’s career, they were a full-on rock and roll band, and it seems obvious there was an exchange of influence between Ike & Tina and the Rolling Stones. Songs like “Bolic” and the title track are rock music at its most thrillingly alive, but Tina, Ike, and their musicians also play with scabrous, metronomic funk-rock on “I Like It” and deep southern soul on “If I Knew Then (What I Know Now).” Feel Good is simply one of the best albums by one of the most underappreciated groups of the classic rock era.