By Isaiah Smith/entertainment editor
With its debut album Twelve Stops and Home, The Feeling, a United Kingdom quintet, has finally moved up from playing gigs in the French Alps for snowboarders and is ready to break into America.
“ America is the land of radio music,” Dan Gillespie, vocalist and lyricist for the band, said in a press release. “I feel positive about coming to the United States because that’s where we come from. Our music is not part of any trend. We want to come across as straightforward and honest.”
Twelve Stops and Home has already found success with a pair of Top 10 international hit singles “Sewn” and “Fill My Little World.”
“ Sewn” is a radio-friendly track with an upbeat, acoustic, pop sound. The piano and lyrics are great.
“ Gimme the song, and I’ll sing it like I mean it/Gimme the words, and I’ll say them like I mean it,” Gillespie sings on “Sewn.”
My favorite track is “Strange,” one of the few songs to sound unique on this album. Unique is the key word here because the lyrics celebrate diversity by asking why we feel ashamed when everyone knows we are strange. This is a great choice for a single because everyone can relate.
The second successful single “Fill My Little World” is reminiscent of the Under the Iron Sea album by Keane with swelling piano and typical Brit-pop vocals. This is a good song exploring obsessive, masochistic, twisted love; it just feels so done to me. There is nothing on this track I have not heard before.
“ It does become like a physical thing,” Gillespie said about “Fill My Little World.”
“ When you’re in love with someone that intensely, it’s like getting kicked in the stomach; it’s very much about being trapped by someone,” he said.
When one listens straight through, this album begins to run together because of the lack of reinvention. “Same Old Stuff” becomes a rather ironic track by the time listeners get to it on the track list because they have indeed heard the same old stuff all the way.
The greatest irony of “Same Old Stuff” is that it actually sounds different from the rest … go figure. The chorus is catchy with electric guitar giving highlights.
“ Like everything we do, it sounds like it might have been well planned, but it all just fell together by accident,” Gillespie said in the release.
“ Blue Piccadilly,” the title track, goes on for eight minutes with digitized sounds and piano in the background. The song seems influenced by Pink Floyd.
“ I’m very restless about my influences,” Gillespie said. “I’ve never been prepared to just listen to one thing enough for it to affect me overall. I’m just incredibly greedy to hear more pop gems.”
As a whole, this CD is bland and non-descript with few really great songs. I give Twelve Stops and Home three stars. Mix it up a little next time, boys; maybe then I will get The Feeling too.
