The Feeling - Manchester Fopp - 5.6.06

Keeping the traditions alive The Feeling announced a series of instore performances around the country to celebrate the launch of their debut album "Twelve Stops and Then Home". Perhaps more than any band in recent history the Feeling have very much stuck to the traditional tried and tested ideology that the song is king and if that's in place everything else surely will follow so on the day of their debut album release we have a band that's been built without some made up PR spin about webcam gigs that never happened or an overnight internet success ala The Arctic Monkeys. Oh yeah, The Arctic Monkeys, the band that The Feeling famously set themselves apart from in an exclusive Designer Magazine interview.

Already running late to do problems at the soundcheck for their headline gig to 1000 people at the Manchester Academy, the band saunter in Fopp only to find that Dan Gillespie's guitar is playing up. An awkward 20 minutes of looking around at the strangest venue ever for a gig. Behind us CD racks are stacked around us while we sit in a cafe come listening booth in front of the counter and coffee making machine the band will perform in front of.

Once the band hit the stage, if you can call it that being a space of floor in front of a coffee making machine and counter, they launch into acoustic version of their latest Top 10 smash "Fill My Little World Right Up". With just an acoustic guitar, electric piano and the bands 3 part harmonies the song is stripped bare compared to the full on lush recorded versions and still it sounds like one of the best songs ever written. "Never Be Lonely" follows as does "Sewn" which Designer Magazine still feels is the bands weakest song, but even that in this folk campfire setting works.

The Feeling are already one of the UK's most promising bands but it wont be long before they make it in the US and Europe.

Words: Alex McCann
Photos: Kirsty Umback www.kirstyumback.com
 

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