Poised to take the next step into the big league on the back of last year's 'Buck Rogers' and 'Seven Days In The Sun' singles, Feeder suddenly found the ground beneath them torn away when drummer Jon Lee committed suicide in January. 'Comfort In Sound' is unsurprisingly littered with references to their former colleague.
The album begins powerfully with the longing 'Just The Way I'm Feeling' offering the first and possibly best lyrical ode to Lee, "Torn in two/You close your eyes for someplace new". 'Come Back Around' is another in their high quality run of addictive pop-rock singles, with its buzzing chorus guaranteed to get moshpits heaving.
Then the album takes the first of its excursions into Smashing Pumpkins circa 'Mellon Collie' territory, with the fuzzed-up pseudo-industrial grind of 'Helium', which never manages to successfully convince. 'Child In You' is also weighed down, but in this case by the sheer enormity of the emotions trying to be conveyed. "Cross a lonely field/As birds begin to speak" sings Grant Nicholas, but his sentiments are hampered by his over-use of well-worn imagery - the return to childhood and innocence as signified by blue skies and nature.
The title track is much better, with a soaring chorus that does take flight, but then 'Forget About Tomorrow' tries far too hard to be their own version of the Pumpkins' 'Tonight, Tonight', with its swirling strings and gentle shifts of pace. 'Summer's Gone' is an unremarkable mid-paced, sub-Radiohead paean to times past, while 'Godzilla' shifts tack dramatically to a fuzzed-up rocker Queens of the Stone Age could get along with.
It's left to 'Find The Colour' and the closing 'Moonshine' to offer the most effective tributes to their departed bandmate, but both in very different ways. The former boasts one of those great choruses that Feeder can do so well, while the latter is a truly affecting eulogy where Nicholas plaintively cries that "Every time we cry/We wave the sun goodbye" as a tumult of guitars rise around him.
Yet overall, 'Comfort In Sound', despite dealing with the most personal subject matter, musically still struggles to shake off the shackles of derivative indie-rock. And it's on those merits, regardless of the circumstances of its creation, that the album must be judged. It's not a bad record, but for the most part, once again, Feeder sadly promise more than they deliver.
