Rockier than Polythene

Feeder’s return to the music scene after a four-year break has created a buzz of excitement among both fans and critics. As he prepares to bring the tour to Folkestone, frontman Grant Nicholas talks to Suz Elvey about a possible 20th anniversary tour and

Mention Feeder to most non-fans and the response is likely to be “oh, the band that did Buck Rogers”. But during the 17 years since that catchy track’s release, Grant Nicholas has often seemed less enthusiastic when playing it live.

That could be because the song, which reached No.5 in the UK charts, was never intended for

Feeder.

He wrote the song for an American band as a way of getting to work with Gil Norton, who has produced albums for bands such as Foo Fighters, Pixies, Terrorvision and Twin Atlantic.

The comparison between their latest album, All Bright Electric, and Polythene, which contains some of the band’s most played live tracks, is meant in an affectionate way. Although he can see similarities, Grant feels the new album is even better than their first. “It’s quite a different record to Polythene,” he said. “I mean, I see where people are coming from, my guitar sound is there, which is very reminiscent of Polythene, and we definitely wanted to make a rockier album.

“But there’s also some super mellow moments as well. I think it touches on what we are, our kind of trademark sound that we started off doing 20 years ago.

“But we’ve learnt a lot along the way and my solo record (Yorktown Heights, released in 2014) has influenced the way I work. I think it’s a better sounding record than

Polythene. I wish Polythene sounded more like this record.

“Don’t get me wrong, I really like Polythene, there are some really good tunes on that record, but we were a lot younger then and probably still finding our feet a bit.” As 2017 marks two decades since Polythene’s release, there have been rumours of a tour where the band will play it in full.

He said: “We’re only doing 14 shows to promote All Bright Electric, which is nowhere near what we’d normally do. But we do have a few old songs that we mix into the set. “We’ve got quite big plans for later in the year, but I can’t say exactly what yet. After the All Bright Electric tour and a load of summer festivals we’ll be doing something else and hopefully that’s going to run into next year and some bigger shows.”

Feeder featured on a supposedly leaked Glastonbury line-up on an events website earlier this month, which was replicated by national newspapers, but slammed by festival organisers as “fake news”. They were down as the

opening act on The Other Stage according to the ‘leak’, which correctly predicted Ed Sheeran would headline the festival on the Sunday. But Grant doesn’t think his band will be returning to the huge Somerset festival this year.

He said: “If we were playing Glastonbury I think I’d probably know!”

From left, Taka Hirose and Grant Nicholas are returning to Folkestone