Support tonight is from The Pearl Harts from East London. They are an all female two-piece in the style of Honeyblood or maybe Blood Red Shoes e.g. just guitar and drums. That's Kirsty Lowrey on guitar and Sara Shaw on drums. They have been around since 2014 with their DIY punk\grunge rock and have songs with great titles like the raucous ‘Pullin My Brains Out’. Which is as lively and as loud as it sounds, like most of their material.
And
so to Feeder. We know that they are due on when their own '20th Century
Trip' comes across the PA although this is followed by Led Zeppelin’s
Kashmir which is probably one of Grant Nicholas’s favourites and perhaps
his latest inspiration.
This current tour is Feeder's longest
for many a year and it also comes before their new album 'Black/Red' is
released, it is due out in April. Personally I don’t think playing a new
album before it’s out works terribly well as not even their most
hardcore fans are very familiar with the tracks and therefore cannot
carry the rest of crowd. I guess having invested the time and money in
to what is a double album they are hoping this approach maximises sales.
I'm not sure that'll work but what do I know. Maybe if they were
touring after release as well but they'll be straight into festival
shows after this tour where they won't be able to get away with playing
much off it.
Mid-set Nicholas himself turns salesman and attempts a sales
pitch by urge the audience to be really old skool and buy the actual physical
product. That may of course be aimed at those with CD players in their brand new Jaguars,
leather sets optional.
The length of the tour also seems to have
resulted in shorter sets which got even shorter when Nicholas fell ill
early on in the tour. Just maybe they have taken on a bit too much here.
That said you can't fault the band's performance tonight even if it is
only a bare thirteen song set with a two song encore.
The new material showcased is very early/late Feeder in that it's very
rocky. Only perhaps 'Lost in the Wilderness' and 'Hey You' really had
choruses the crowd could latch on to.
There are six tracks in
total from 'Black/Red' alongside the usual batch of crowd pleasers from
their 'mid' pop period when they had their hits but overall it's not the
hits-laden night some casual fans may have been expecting. Thankfully
for regulars like me their tours are now longer quite that predictable but there is still
only room tonight for two more obscure tracks for us Feeder nerds both
of which come from their last but one album 'Tallullah'. 'Kyoto' which
grows on me a bit more each time I hear them play it live and the always
brilliant 'Fear of Flying'.
The band are just a four-piece on this tour with no Dean Deavall their usual keyboard player in attendance. This aids their recent rockier approach, which is all good, yet means some segments are clearly on tape.
After
an effervescent double of ‘Come Back Around’ and 'Insomnia', that
finally got the room jumping, we nearly got an extra track which,
according to the set list, would have seen either 'My Perfect Day' or
'Tangerine' played but after a debate they opted for neither. Early on
in the tour they were playing both as a fabulous foursome from the
band's début album 'Polythene' along with 'Polythene Girl' and the ever
present 'High' which is what they skipped on to before ending the set
with the obligatory finale of 'Buck Rogers' followed by 'Just A Day' in
the encore after another 'Black/Red' track 'Soldiers of Love'.
The
band are as ever excellent, performance wise, but tonight did feel a
bit like one they wanted to get their lead singer through safely while
not taking too many extra risks.
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