Bird Feeder

Silent Cry, Feeder’s sixth studio album, comes gorgeously presented in a stylish black slip box with gold lettering, and artwork by award winning designer / typographer Nils Leonard. Coming two years after a “Best of” and three years after the last original material, fans have waiting a long time for this. I for one was not disappointed. The current line up has been together for six out of the band’s sixteen year life-time, and they have honed their own distinctive sound as well as pushing out fresh ideas on this album. Like Guy (of Elbow) Grant Nicholas has also kicked the big name producers into touch and taken over most of the recording for himself. Now, I’m not sure if it’s just me but on some of these tracks Grant’s vocals have a vibrato that puts me in mind of Martin Rossiter (singer with Gene back in the ‘90s), now that is one beautiful voice. If you’re a Feeder fan, you know what they sound like so here are just the icings on the cake. If you’re not a fan, shame on you, buy this album at once!

1. The album kicks off with their single, 'We Are The People', standard Feeder-fare in the style of 'Comfort In Sound', except a good bit heavier, as indeed the whole album is.

2. 'Itsumo' kicks bottom with some serious Placebo inspired guitar and drumming work.

3. 'Miss You' would, in the hands of any other band, be a hardcore wall of noise, but Feeder give it the clarity of a rock anthem with a catchy hectic riff.

4. 'Tracing Lines' starts life as a Strokes’ track before unveiling an Oasis-like chorus, some serious indie-rock playing and a tidy guitar solo.

5. The title track, 'Silent Cry', was the first track on which I noticed the “Rossiter effect”. The song itself starts dark and emotive and develops into a rampant rock-beast by the second chorus.

6. 'Fires', I love this track. I can just imagine the crowd, lighters aloft singing along to the hypnotic, lines "she lights the fire, she lights the fire."

7. 'Heads Held High', starts like an acoustic Foo Fighters track, then explodes into glorious anthemic choruses.

8. A fuzzy ‘kazoo’ sound (keyboards I guess) kicks off '8:18', which alternates wildly: Quiet – Loud – Quiet – Loud - Middle 8 – Quiet – Loud.

9. On 'Who’s The Enemy' I can hear that Rossiter vibrato again in Grant’s vocals. There is a fantastic, pompous Muse-like guitar/string section in the middle, "Running away, losing our way, we're fighting with ourselves but who's the enemy?"

10. 'Space', is just a little musical interlude before…

11. 'Into The Blue', takes us off to stylish, sexy, garage rock.

12. 'Guided By A Voice', features lots of ooh, ooh, oohs over white noise.

13. 'Sonorous', has that Muse thing going again, sort of 'Black Holes And Revelations'. The sound is a bit Richard Ashcroft and a bit Rossiter. This track is another of the album highlights.

14. 'Yeah Yeah', the first bonus track, pretty standard Feeder stuff

15. 'Every Minute', This reminds me of a Kings Of Leon track, but I can’t quite put my finger on which one.