Feeder - 'Pushing The Senses' (Echo)
2/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Granted, it's hard to maintain an edge. With a few notable, godlike exceptions (Tom Waits, The Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash), we grow up and we mellow out, quite understandably. Nobody wants to see their granddad rocking out. Unless your granddad is Tom Waits. Some of them have seen too much, they've changed, things around them have changed. But we still love our elders, they teach us, they raise us, we follow them.
The admiration isn't unconditional, but the strength of past glories is enough for us to overlook certain lapses in judgement. 'Pushing The Senses', we're disappointed to report, is one of them. It shouldn't go down as a highlight of Feeder's time with us. But neither does it damage their status so much that they can't find a way back. As an album, it won't find as much favour as anything they've previously thrown the way of the public at large. As a band, they'll remain one of our most cherished, despite this new bizarrely lethargic direction. A blip, we hope.
Recent single 'Tumble & Fall' is most guilty. There are very few songs strong enough to get away with having a refrain purely built around the word 'yeah' and this should be held up as an example of such a violation of that simple code. Why, for so many, do Feeder get away with it? Because, as disappointingly throwaway as a lot of 'Pushing The Senses' (a very misleadingly named record) is, the tunes are still incredibly catchy.
And perhaps here's the problem. 'Buck Rogers' was a load of nonsense about cars and lemons and Devonshire, but it pulled through due to a stonking melody. The majority of 'Comfort In Sound' wasn't the most blatant their songwriting has ever been, but it sounded very considered, and at times desperately sad. Here, the melodies are passable, but nothing like their peaks. The subject matter too is so vague that it's difficult to latch on to anything in particular.
Apart from in places (the title-track is not only the best here, but a career highlight, and 'Tender' finds them at their most poignant), the complexity of their songs hasn't developed enough to overcome such flaws. In similarly tragic circumstances, fellow Welshies the Manic Street Preachers just about managed it. So are Feeder just not trying hard enough?
Perhaps it's quite the opposite. They're trying for something relaxed, comfortable even, but haven't mastered it yet. This raises all kinds of questions about whether trying to be relaxed is a complete paradox, and perhaps that's where it slips up. Instead of chilled, they sound tired (or in the case of 'Pain On Pain' just very uninspired), and so the album is a tiring listen, a perpetual hangover record. Too much of that cider from a lemon, this is where it gets you.
As already hinted though, it won't be a case of pulling things back from the brink to get back on-track. There's enough to build on here to warrant its existence, just little that will excite this time, and even less that will stir the soul. Where Feeder have enjoyed the status of a band for the masses for a few years now, perhaps this is only likely to go down well with the more stringently faithful - a group who, thanks to that previous success, may just number more than ever before. For their sakes, we hope so.
Artists in this article: Feeder
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