Feeder, Rock City Nottingham

Supported by Tigress

Feeder do have a habit of picking good supports and Tigress tonight are awesome. Perhaps it’s just my favourite three guitars plus drums and nothing else or maybe it’s a singer who to me seems part Courtney Love, part Lily Allen and part Lena Zavaroni. 

  

Feeder are back at Rock City for the first time in almost three years, yeah something happened, and with one of the best sets I've them do for some time. It was as if for once if they had stopped trying to please everyone and gone out primarily playing stuff to please themselves and just seeing how that went down.

Out of the set went several of their bigger hits that they've been playing nonstop for years. It was a set list that needed freshening up and they did that on this tour. That said they seemed to get less brave after the first night in Bexhill where favourites of oldies like me, Stereoworld and World Asleep, went out again after just one night.

 

One that has stayed is Radiation from Polythene which was amazing to hear again for the first time since 1998. The other belter is My Perfect Day, sadly neglected over the years and played far too infrequently.

Then there's Godzilla, a real outlier on Comfort In Sound and not a track I'm overfond of but it growls tonight.

It's a set with five from the new album Torpedo although it constantly reduced during the tour after starting at eight on night one. As the content from Torpedo reduced so did the overall length of the set, ending up a shortish set of 16 songs in Nottingham. There were three tracks from their previous album ‘Tallulah’ and four biggies - ‘Feeling A Moment’, ‘Just The Way I'm Feeling’, ‘Insomnia’ and ‘High’.

Then there's ‘Buck Rogers’ which I know Grant likes about as much as I do e.g. not very much, but his threats not to play it again don't come to fruition as he claims it’s to celebrate Echo Park’s 21st but hey there's always next time.... and he could always have hit us with ‘Oxygen’.

Overall though it’s a fantastic set particularly from ‘Fear of Flying’ (best track on ‘Tallulah’) and ‘When It All Breaks Down’ (best track on ‘Torpedo’) downwards and the last five tracks were just sublime - ‘Radiation’, ‘My Perfect Day’, ‘Insomnia’, ‘Godzilla’ and ‘High’. Three of which come from ‘Polythene’ on the occasion of it’s 25^th birthday.

I tell the man so when I meet him afterwards. Along with my mate and his partner, who won’t be happy if I don’t mention our first post lockdown meeting.