Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 15/05/06
Label: Echo

Ten years into their career, this compilation of Feeder's finest moments has the uncanny ability of stopping you dead in your tracks, though not for the reasons you might expect. Rather than creating an overwhelming effect thanks to their music, it's the realisation that they've been worrying the charts for nigh on a decade with whatever bandwagon the band have managed to hitch a ride with.

This in itself is no bad thing; Feeder's main strength has always been in producing singles that manage to differentiate themselves from the majority of the dross that makes up the playlists of mainstream daytime radio courtesy of a combination of killer hooks and crunchy production. However, closer inspection reveals them to be a band as vacuous as a hot air balloon, as they stick to the tried and tested formula of fast songs and slower ones.

Take "Buck Rogers"; tapping into the Nirvana / Pixies formula of quiet-loud-quiet dynamics, Feeder manage to make it to the end of the song without saying absolutely anything at all save displaying a talent in nonsensical rhyming ("We'll buy a house in Devon / Drink cider from a lemon") and it's a method that's almost cynically repeated on "Seven Days In The Sun", "Just A Day" and "Shatter".

Then, of course, we have Feeder's second setting as the band shifts down a gear and enters the world of introspective navel-gazing. It's a shame that it took the tragic death of drummer Jon Lee to galvanise singer-guitarist Grant Nicholas into some kind of lyrical action and "Just The Way I'm Feeling" and "Forget About It All" are nothing if not sincere but sadly, as evidenced with "Tumble And Fall" ("…tumble and fall / together we crawl") it's an effort that Nicholas has subsequently found hard to sustain.

As is obligatory with contemporary Greatest Hits collections, we're treated to three brand new songs: "Lost And Found" - surprise, surprise - is the fast one that resolutely sticks to the usual procedure, but "Burn The Bridges" and "Save Us" come as close to experimentation as Feeder ever will by starting off slow before picking up pace and going quiet - loud - quie…oh, you get the picture.

As a singles band, Feeder are masters of their art; like a McFly for people with responsibilities or a Stereophonics it's OK to like, their incursions into the charts can, on occasion, shake up a moribund schedule, but taken as a continuous listening experience, their lyrical and musical limitations are all too frequently revealed.

    by James Marshall