Taka Hirose and Grant Nicholas
All by myself
Cause I don't want to drag you down
Hold you down, cause you're a friend
Cause I don't want to drag you down
Hold you down, cause you're a friend
— "Just A Day"
Feeder are a British alternative rock band, consisting of Grant Nicholas on guitar and vocals, Taka Hirose on bass and Karl Brazil on drums. Past members have been their founding member, Jon Lee, who committed suicide in 2001, and Skunk Anansie drummer, Mark Richardson, who left in 2009 due to Skunk reforming and band differences.
The band, originally named 'Reel', went though quite a few name changes. The band first started as 'Temper Temper', a electro duo formed when Grant and Jon first met in their hometown of Newport, Wales during their teenage years. The duo became a full band called 'Rain Dance' but when both of these acts failed to find record deals, they formed a three piece band called 'Real'. The name was then changed to 'Reel' when they fired the bassist and found Taka Hirose, who placed an advert in a local paper, stating he was a bassist looking for a band. Finally, they changed their name to 'Feeder', after Grant's pet goldfish at the time. In 2010 they changed their name to 'Renegades', and did a miniature tour of the UK under this name, before settling back to the normal band name.
The band have released ten studio albums, with their most recent one, Torpedo, being released in 2022.
Discography:
- Studio Albums:
- Polythene (1997)
- Yesterday Went To Soon (1999)
- Echo Park (2001)
- Comfort In Sound (2002)
- Pushing The Senses (2005)
- Silent Cry (2008)
- Renegades (2011)
- Generation Freakshow (2012)
- All Bright Electric (2016)
- Tallulah (2019)
- Torpedo (2022)
- Black/Red (2024)
- EPs:
- Two Colours (1995)
- Swim (1996)
- Seven Sleepers (2008)
- Renegades EP1 (2010)
- Renegades EP2 (2010)
- Compilations:
- Another Yesterday (2000) - a small B-side companion piece to the album Yesterday Went To Soon, released only in Japan.
- Swim (2001) the re-release of the Swim EP, with five new tracks from the Swim/Polythene sessions.
- Best Days In The Sun
- Picture Of Perfect Youth (2004) - a double-disc B-side collection
- Feeder: The Singles (2006) - greatest hits
- The Best of Feeder / Arrow (2017) - greatest hits collection that includes an extra mini-album Arrow
Tropes that apply to the band:
- Album Title Drop: Most of their albums do this, with only Echo Park and All Bright Electric averting it so far.
- Audience Participation Song: The band turns "Just a Day" into this in every concert.
- B-Side: Picture Of Perfect Youth, a 2-disc set that covers 36 of their B-sides from the Polythene to the ''Comfort In Sound' era. Due to how prolific the band was there are still quite a few that were left out of the compilation.
- Darker and Edgier: While not as heavy as their debut, Torpedo features more harder and grungy elements compared to their previous albums, with its lyrical content being based on the situation around the world with the COVID-19 Pandemic.
- Distinct Double Album: Black/Red, a double album divided into two sides with nine tracks each, with the "Black" being the grungy hard rock side and the "Red" being the melodic alternative side.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Polythene is much heavier in comparison to the material they would be releasing afterwards, borrowing heavily from the American Grunge and Alternative Rock scene. Some reviewers at the time alluded them as the UK's answer to The Smashing Pumpkins.
- Epic Instrumental Opener: "Droids" from Black/Red, which is a first for the band.
- Epic Rocking: "Moonshine", the closer from Comfort In Sound clock past the six minute mark.
- "The Healing" from Torpedo is also six minutes long, and it also features a darker hard rock passage on the bridge.
- Greatest Hits Album: The Singles which contained three new tracks. The Best of Feeder/Arrow count as well.
- Hidden Track: The original pressings of Yesterday Went Too Soon have "Bubblehead" hidden after the closer "Paperfaces". It doesn't resemble anything on the album, sounding more like the songs from Beck or Soul Coughing. This was later subverted once the album was released on streaming services.
- Lighter and Softer: Pushing the Senses and, to a lesser extent, Comfort in Sound are this to their first three albums, mostly due to Jon Lee's suicide.
- Lyrical Dissonance: "Just a Day" with its uplifting energetic instrumental and its desperate lyrics.
- Minimalistic Cover Art: The cover for Black/Red, which is the two colours of the titled being divided diagonally.
- Miniscule Rocking/Single Stanza Song: "20th Century Trip" from Polythene and the interlude track "Space" from Silent Cry.
- Mood Whiplash: Taken to the extreme in Comfort in Sound with "Godzilla", a noisy grunge song sandwiched in between two softer tracks.
- New Sound Album: Yesterday Went Too Soon trades the fuzzy guitars from Polythene for a more introspective indie sound while retaining the rockier moments from their debut. Echo Park leans more towards arena rock. Comfort In Sound and Pushing the Senses are softer in comparison to the previous three, as a response to Jon Lee's suicide. With Silent Cry, the band has tried to encompass everything that they have done by that point and since, with All Bright Electric deviating a bit from the formula by having more folksy elements and Tallulah and Torpedo bringing their grungy elements more to forefront in the context of their modern sound.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The death of Jon Lee had a massive impact on the band and his legacy still informs the band and their music to this day. The Comfort in Sound album in particular contains many dark and reflective songs about the tragedy.
- Performance Video: The videos for "Pushing The Senses" and "Comfort In Sound".
- The video for "Just a Day" takes an interesting spin on this: it's fans miming along to the song in their bedrooms.
- Precision F-Strike: Feeder have only sworn once in a studio recorded song: the single "Day In Day Out" has the lyrics "Taste the bullshit on a plane, we just pissed our lives away".
- Protest Song: "We Are The People" was seen as an example of this, but "In Times of Crisis" could be seen as a protest to the war in Iraq.
- Rearrange the Song: Whilst it still rocks, the single mix of Shatter was remixed to be less raw and more radio friendly, when compared to the original B-Side/Japanese bonus track version. Noticeably it's less distorted, the percussion panning is different, and the remix removed some shouted lines from the chorus.
- Sanity Slippage Song: "Descend" from Polythene.
- Shout-Out:
- Debbie Harry and actor Steve McQueen in "Under The Weather".
- Black Sabbath in "Circles"
- In several concerts, the band started "Lost and Found" by playing the riff of Foo Fighters' "All My Life".
- Re-release the Song: Two of the band's hits, "Just A Day" and "Shatter", were originally released as B-Sides, but then released as singles in their own right for the Gran Turismo 3 soundtrack and The Singles respectively. At the time of their B-Side releases, fans regarded them as wasted songs and though unrelated, there were band petitions asking for them to be singles.
- Stop and Go: "Just a Day" does this, to the point that it's made fun of in the video, which consists entirely of fans rocking out to the song in their bedrooms, and has a group of fans pausing the song at that exact point to have a quick cup of tea before resuming the head banging.
- Surreal Music Video: YOU try to make sense to what is happening in the "Buck Rogers" music video.
- Title Track: "Yesterday Went Too Soon", "Comfort in Sound", "Pushing the Senses", "Silent Cry", "Generation Freakshow" and "Tallulah". Subverted with "Polythene Girl", however.
- Two-Part Trilogy:
According to Grant, the double album Black/Red is this, with Torpedo being the first part of the trilogy.
