Join With Us

The Feeling: most played band on UK radio

The diversity of modern music presupposes that a popularity of one or another band depends to a large extent on material's originality. That is, the more interesting the songs are from the viewpoint of innovation, the bigger are the chances for a band to get on in the world. But this is just a theory; in reality everything looks quite different. The only thing that any listener needs is a good song, if there is an attractive melody than such things as originality or modernity withdraw from the foreground. A British band The Feeling is a pretty demonstrative case. Dance-rock in the vain of 80's, evident influence of disco, Queen and ELO – musical innovation is the last thing you may think of when looking at such a combination. But it was this very formula that made The Feeling the number one most played band on UK radio in 2006 after the release of their debut album Twelve Stops and Home. According to some resources their four singles received 97,436 plays, which means that, on average, a song by The Feeling was played 267 times every day.

More ambitious and diverse record

Despite a retro set of The Feeling's influences, the band actually doesn't sound that vintage. Perhaps the air, some melodic structures, performing manner do evoke associations with heroes of pop-rock scene of the bygone era, but still the sound that The Feeling use has a pretty palpable taste of modern times. It was noticeable on Twelve Stops and Home and it became even more noticeable on their new album Join With Us. The band follows the same way in the musical sense but in general this record turned out to be more ambitious, expensive and global, if you please. It becomes really evident on such tracks as Without You or melodramatic This Time, where the musicians effectively use orchestration. These innovations go pretty well with the band's basic style and in general they give an additional confidence to the songs. However, it is not the main feature, which distinguishes Join With Us from the band's first album. While Twelve Stops And Home was having some elements, which brought the songs close to the idea of rock music, Join With Us remains almost devoid of this trait. The Feeling has somehow shifted towards pop. Roughly speaking, Join With Us for The Feeling is approximately the same thing as It Won't Be Soon Before Long for Maroon 5.

Shift towards pop music on Join With Us

A more expensive production of The Feeling is noticeable from the very first seconds of the album. I Thought It Was Over, as the first track and as the main single here, gives quite a realistic picture of what The Feeling are today. A warm disco beat, sappy bass and dance gear dynamics. Everything is done quite simply but it is seasoned with a fair portion of interesting small details. The material sounds competent, every song has some sort of a stylistic pivot, which joins them together and makes Join With Us very integrated record. The only thing that may disappoint fans of The Feelings is that very shift towards pop mentioned above. If you always liked that rock flavor of the previous record you should keep in mind that this record has almost nothing of the kind. The songs sound very poppy all the same even when the musicians start torturing overloaded guitars. The only exception here is the very last track We Can Dance. This mystic ballad looks really different from the rest of the new songs. In general, Join With Us is a pretty felicitous record and it will be definitely popular. But it also has some pitfalls of its own, which may hurt some of The Feeling's fans.