Yahoo! Music Review

Gig played on 19/03/08

Smash Hits may be dead, but that poptastic feeling lives on. Poptastic, and full of beans. Few bands would dare to preface their appearance on-stage with the strains of artists they've shoplifted from so thoroughly - ELO and Andrew Gold, in this case - or serve up two covers that reach pop pinnacles that The Feeling, for all their best-selling triumph, have yet to reach. Although, to their credit, it's clear that the band's love of "Together In Electric Dreams" and "Video Killed The Radio Star" is as selfless as it is shared by the crowd.

So give the boys points for nerve, along with all the other points they rack up in a night full of giddy, gleeful, chorus-filled guilt-free pleasure. For the uptown polish of their Dior Homme-sharp suits and an MTV-slick neon-lit set, balanced against an engagingly plausible humility ("Who would have thought a bunch of geeks like us would end up with a number one record?" blushes vocalist Dan Gillespie Sells). For Sells' unrepentantly melodramatic delivery, his sparkly red Judy Garland microphone and - in the night's unquestioned highlight - a solo-piano reading of "Strange" that confirms its status as a compassion-soaked gay anthem.

For the band's ability to sculpt a satisfying show out of songs that are essentially all crescendo ("I Thought It Was Over"; the cascading harmonies of "Show Some Love"; the Beach Boys-to-bombast "Spare Me"). For the endearingly haphazard shapes thrown by two can-can girls during "Don't Make Me Sad". For putting some oomph (and the occasional guitar solo) into material where the ruthlessly compressed sonic range never strays from the AM band. And, most importantly, for being able to inject freshness into songs you'd expect to have had the drive-time life sucked right out of them ("Never Be Lonely" and a delightfully bumptious "I Love It When You Call").

Needless to say, the night isn't without elements bound to make the retro-phobic shudder - although it's hard to believe they'd come within ten miles of Horsham's finest. Were they here, they'd be pointing with alarm at the Wang Chung haircuts; the unsettling resemblance of Ciaran Jeremiah's velvet blazer to items in Chris de Burgh's wardrobe; arrangements that occasionally recall the cheesy journeyman efficiency of Billy Joel; a saxophonist straight out of Haircut 100; the Thomas Dolby-esque dorky freak-out of the new album's title track. But doubtless everyone in the house old enough to access those references couldn't care less.

If there is any kind of guilty secret lurking in the evening, it's the fact - which tonight is quite brilliantly well-disguised - that The Feeling's chart-topping second album "Join With Us" is, sadly, not a patch on "12 Stops And Home". Fingers crossed that the radio stars who exit to the strains of The Buggles will come up with a stonking third act.

by Jennifer Nine