Comfort food

“ I feel it’s going down,
Ten feet below the ground,
I’m waiting for your healing hand,
One touch could bring me round
…It’s just the way I’m feeling.”
– ‘Just The Way I’m Feeling’ (Comfort In Sound)

“This time, I wasn’t even aware that I was writing an album. I felt very free in some way, like I was just writing music. It simply wound up being a Feeder album, which is the nice thing about this record.”

Nine months and one album after the death of friend and band mate, drummer Jon Lee, Feeder’s Grant Nicholas is feeling reflective. Comfort In Sound, their fourth studio album, is garnering almost exclusively rave reviews, and has succeeded in re-asserting Feeder as the band to beat in the war of the Brit rockers.

Comfort In Sound was recorded soon after Jon’s death. Did Grant feel pressured to prove that Feeder were still a going concern?

“I don’t know if it was that, as such. When you’ve got good ideas coming and the songs are there, you can’t really stop them. Sometimes you can lose a moment. I’ve done that before. I’ve been on tour and I’ve started writing stuff and when I got back, I’d missed it. I just wanted to capture these songs before they left this time. It did come quite easily, but I was worried that after what happened that I wouldn’t want to do it again. But there was something telling me that I should carry on writing, so I locked myself away in a little demo studio and the songs just poured out of me, really. It was one of those very natural things.”

The calibre of songwriting on this album is a distinct progression from earlier releases.

“Yeah, I’ve always had songs like this, but they’ve never wound up on a Feeder record for some reason, or they’d turn up on B sides. I really wanted to show that side of my writing because I felt that’s where a lot of our strengths lie. We’re seen as being this heavy band with poppy choruses and Echo Park (Feeder’s breakthrough third LP) was full of fun videos, but I think you need to reinvent yourself on each record somehow. Besides, I’m a few years older than I was when I wrote the last one!

“The depth has always been there, but I think I was scared of it before. It’s frustrating really, because I think a lot of that is down to how we’ve been perceived. On a press level we’ve been trapped, and I’m hoping this album might make people think that they didn’t give us a chance.”

Did it feel like empty success then when Echo Park took off the way it did, given that it wasn’t quite what Grant was trying to get across?

“Yeah, in some ways. I think Echo Park is a really good album, and I’m not going to say otherwise. Maybe as a songwriter, I felt like that – that I had more to do, for my own peace of mind. But I’m sure that most people who write music probably feel the same. I do feel that we’ve got a lot closer on this record to where I’d always imagined we should be, or how we should sound. And it sounds really awful saying that after what happened with Jon, but I think this album was going that way anyway.”

Is his positive outlook a sign tht he’s come to terms with Jon’s suicide?

“Well, I hadn’t for a while, I have to admit. I’ve gone through complete hell and back over this, because I really did start to lose my mind over what happened. I’ve known Jon for a long time – we grew up together and we were mates, really close. We’d argue like cat and dog, but we felt like brothers and he was a funny bloke and I sort of… it’s weird. And I do feel…

“Last night I had a real downer. You think, ‘God, I really miss him’. But you can’t do anything about that. I’m never going to forget what happened, it’s always going to be there, but I feel positive about this record. I honestly feel it’s the best record that I’ve written. I don’t know how it’ll do commercially, I don’t even care at this point. All I want is to get out there and tour and keep making records. It is different, and I do turn round sometimes when we’re on stage and think, ‘Oh no, this feels a bit weird’, but after getting the first few shows out of the way, it feels as if we can get that confidence again. It’s going to be difficult, but I think we can do
it.”

Comfort In Sound is available now on Echo