I’m dreadful with surprises. I have to know.
So I always look at the setlist before I go to a gig.
I did it when Feeder played recently and when I saw there were six new tracks in the show I thought “Well that could go either way”.
It is always tough when the audience doesn’t know the stuff, isn’t it? Yet we needn’t have worried.
Feeder delivered a masterclass. They were brilliant, and time and time again in the set they referred to “Black/Red” – their first double album- and implored the crowd to listen to it in full when it emerged.
Over an hour of music opens with “Droids” effectively an intro. Always the thing to give extra gravitas, after all.
“ELF” had started that gig in Birmingham and it’s sort of Feeder 2024. Lush, ambitious, yet somehow still the band that made “Polythene”.
That’s even more true on “Playing With Fire”. An absolutely superb track, anchored down by Taka Hirose’s bass. As heavy as they’ve ever been, but with lashings of melody. “Now the sky is turning red” goes its hook. And the yin and the yang here is named.
“Vultures” is another one with real energy. It fizzes and the band clearly believes in this material. Indeed, disc one is as heavy as Feeder have ever been.
They’ve always been apart from their peers. They somehow just think bigger, and “Sahara” is absolutely enormous. There’s a real depth to this. “Hey You” has a lighter (in every sense of the word) feel. But listen to the words: “The Grim Reaper is on the loose, the hangman ties the noose” sings Grant Nicholas in a rather matter-of-fact way.
It seems odd to be writing a lengthy piece about an album I could sum up in two: “effortlessly anthemic” would cover not just the brilliant “The Knock” but the rest of it too.
It really is quite the knack that the band have. “Perfume” lives on its dark riffing, and the last one on the “Black” side, “Al.m^n” has at its heart the words: “don’t look back” and there’s a dark cloud hanging over it.
Disc 2 – the “Red” side if you will. Thunders into view on the back of some mighty drumming and it shows the astonishing creativity that is on display here. “Scream” (which wasn’t played the other week) will hopefully make its way into the live set as it’s probably the best thing across the piece.
By way of a contrast – which even if this isn’t a conventional “concept” album as such might be the point of the loose connection? – “Submarine” lurks a little in the murky depths as they “get out of the rat race” and the way it builds is a real skill.
They’ve always had a gift for pop music, have Feeder and “Lost In The Wilderness” is totally unashamed to be a pop song, which even if the acoustic guitar comes out (initially at least) “Memory Loss” with its pulse and dynamics, is not.
“Unconditional” would, if it was a U2 song, have got Bono another Gold Disc. “Here Comes The Hurricane” is the other that you hope makes the live shows in the future. And “Soldiers Of Love” which did, wraps its harrowing lyrics around some military drum beats and bagpipes.
And whilst this isn’t a short record it’s a damn good one, that’s true even before it ends with the slightly electronic swirl of “Ghosts On Parade”.
What stands out on “Black/Red” is how much the band obviously believes in it, and have poured every bit of themselves into it.
They could have just phoned it in, so to speak, at this point in their careers. Stuck a record out with a couple of bangers and a bit of filler and toured the hits.
No one fancied that.
Instead what they’ve done is look forward while still sounding more like themselves than ever.
“Black/Red” is a monument to ambition and class.
Rating 9/10
