Feeder - 'Silent Cry' (Echo) Released 16/06/08

Seven years ago, Welsh rockers Feeder catapulted themselves into the consciousness of the mainstream with the carefree brilliance and success of their third album ‘Echo Park’. Tragically the year after their breakthrough, drummer Jon Lee took his own life but the band overcame and the release of their sixth studio album revisits their rockier roots.

‘Silent Cry’ opens with the stadium aspirations of ‘We Are The People’ and all the formulaic expectation that goes with it. Granted, its uncomplicated feel good festival fodder through and through but the lyric “All our lives we’re waiting for something new” only confirms what Feeder fail to deliver. It’s a highly polished, well executed safe bet of an album all round, with established pop structures, hopeful highs, resigned lows and a pre-programmed vocal that extends to ‘Itsumo’, ‘Miss You’, ‘Fires’ and the title track, which unless you’re a lovelorn teenager wallowing in the wake of a post pubescent relationship gone awry, doesn’t quite ring true. The paint by numbers sanguine yet melancholic approach that the band favour, is probably supposed to invoke some level of poignancy, but in reality, ‘Heads Held High’ only sounds like a predictable collaboration between Coldplay and Snow Patrol and by the time ‘8:18’ and ‘Who’s The Enemy’ come around, the lyrical banality and assumption that the listener will have by now formed an emotional attachment to the albums sentiments is one stop short of insulting.

There are however some that manage to slip through the pre-prescribed net. ‘Tracing Lines’ offers a short lived glimmer of hope before reverting to the bands standardised sound, while ‘Guided By A Voice’, a different take on a familiar theme, makes good use of timing and the somewhat reinvented and vaguely disjointed guitar of ‘Into The Blue’ provides a welcome respite; but in many ways its too little too late. If, depending on your point of view, you’re lucky enough to make it through to the final track, you might feel as though you’ve been walking in circles for the best part of forty five minutes, as ‘Sonorous’ which can incidentally mean echoing, throws up more shock horror overkill guitar and for want of a better phrase, sentimental wank that ironically includes the lyric “Don’t give up, you have us”; if that’s meant to inspire optimism, we’re all doomed.

To be fair, ‘Silent Cry’ is neither unlistenable nor musically inept, far from it. The majority of the annoyingly appealing nostalgic tracks would sit quite comfortably on the playlists of most commercial radio stations without difficulty. But like Ronseal, as Feeder albums go, it does exactly what it says on the tin and not much more. That said, for the die-hard Feeder fan, it’s a triumphant welcome return to form from a band on top of their predictable game.