Feeder - 'Comfort In Sound' (Echo)
4/5
By: Toby L
If you felt Feeder's last LP 'Echo Park' was a progression for the group...
Once indie-stalwarts and now showing heavily promising signs that they're willing to make the convergence into the rock super-league and knock around the likes of Foo Fighters and the Manics as contemporaries, it's only a shame that Feeder's rapid advancement in music has been shifted along by the untimely suicide of their drummer, Jon Lee. With a credit to his name on the artwork, and lyrics orientating on the effect caused by his passing, now guitarist and singer Grant Nicholas and bassist Taka Hirose are moving on, triumphantly.
Thus, essentially, where 'Comfort In Sound' most notably scores accolade is the fact that it's a collection of individually strong tracks - 12 of 'em, to be precise - with enough dreamy variation between cranking it up into deformed overdrive and composing it to a fine series of downbeat-gems. You'd have already heard first single to be lifted from the record - the searing 'Come Back Around' - but ranked alongside the similarly sweat-inducing, up-tempo numbers as 'Helium' or fuzz-distortion, SOAD-adoring 'Godzilla', and you're faced with correspondingly compelling speaker-killers.
But, when the vehicle veers off the beaten track and dwindles in a melancholy country-pace ('Quick Fade'), injects swirling synths (the title-track) or features Nicholas crooning gently, 'Close your eyes and drift away to somewhere still' within 'Child In You', you'd be forgiven for wondering what happened to a band that once brought forward such straightforward, feel-good sound-bites as 'Just A Day' or 'Seven Days In The Sun'. The affair would almost be too challengingly soft if it were not for the moody 'Summer's Gone' or brooding drum-machine, harmonic-guitar pouting likes of 'Moonshine', whilst the anthemic 'Find The Colour' is akin to one of their former finest moments, 'High', the Coldplay chords and strings of 'Love Pollution' dazzling to similar effect.
The album-name says what we're all in for, really, and the music itself is bravely open and immediately reaching at all times. How Feeder have matured and risen to such a fine stature in one giant swoop may seem one of the world's latest, greatest, new wonders, but when the overall outcome is as scintillating and warm as this, such a matter seems trivial to consider; let's anticipate a persistently improving development from here on in - and better times for Nicholas and Hirose alike.
Artists in this article: Feeder
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