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Feeder, Pushing the Senses

Pushing the Senses

Feeder's last album - 2002's Comfort in Sound - carried a heavyweight emotional punch thanks to the suicide of drummer Jon Lee. Curiously, three years on, Pushing the Senses covers much the same lyrical ground.

Bitter Glass finds singer/guitarist Grant Nicholas pondering "solitary blossom, reminders of a friend", while the quietly turbulent Tumble and Fall confesses: "Life's not the same, since you went away." It's difficult not to be moved by Frequency, a poem to Lee which pictures the departed sticksman "lying awake on top of silver clouds".

The big difference is in the music. Aimed squarely at the Keane/ Coldplay soft-rock market, Feeder have had all of their edges carefully removed. Thus, words of emotion and pain arrive in an atmosphere of soothing, sub-U2 calm. The result is a kind of emotional aural soup that will baffle the spikier members of their original punky fanbase.

Still, Tumble and Fall is nestling in the top five, and if Pushing the Senses propels the trio towards arena status then maybe they will think they've gained more than they've lost.