Feeder
The Best Of Feeder / Arrow

It's time to celebrate once again for the Welsh band Feeder.

Eleven years after their first compilation "Singles" (admittedly somewhat incomplete, though enriched by three great unreleased tracks) and just one year after their last (beautiful) studio work, "All Bright Electric," Grant Nicholas and bassist Take Hirose opt for a very ambitious and interesting operation.

This new "The Best Of Feeder," in fact, in its deluxe version is presented as a monumental collection divided into three discs with a total of fifty tracks; if the first two discs comprise an exhaustive collection of the duo's best tracks, the third represents the most interesting novelty. It is a true new album consisting of nine unreleased tracks subtitled "Arrow," and the great discovery is that it is the best collection of unreleased tracks from the Welsh band since the underrated "Silent Cry."

But let's proceed in order: it's almost redundant to talk about the old tracks, now rightfully considered among the best offerings of British alt-rock in the last twenty years. Songs like the stellar ballads "Feeling A Moment" and "Just The Way I'm Feeling" in the hands of other more "marketable" bands would now be considered immortal classics, and the genuine hits that made Feeder's fortune are not lacking, demonstrating how Nicholas is a prolific author well aware of his own means (besides the now overused "Buck Rogers" how can we forget the masterpiece "Forget About Tomorrow," the rainy melancholy of "High," and the joyful summer hit "Seven Days In The Sun"). The decision to include some "minor" episodes from the band's discography is also appropriate, like the aggressive "Tangerine" (very Pumpkins-esque) and "Stereo World" (from the beautiful debut "Polythene"), as well as the very recent excellent singles taken from the latest "All Bright Electric" (among which stands out the playful pop-punk of "Paperweight" and the brilliant melody of "Eskimo").

That said, the nine new tracks win no small challenge: to not look out of place next to so much brilliance. Starting with the first single "Figure You Out" (a grand electric ballad like "Feeling A Moment") and the subsequent "Walk Away" (a sweeping midtempo typical of Feeder that returns to the manic attention for melodies highlighted in "Generation Freakshow"), both written during the work on Nicholas' solo debut, the new tracks depart from the robust sound of the latest studio effort and rediscover a refined taste for airy melodies that were temporarily set aside. "Bees" is a pure distillation of Pixies sound, "Sound Of Birds" a heartfelt homage to another fundamental band of the genre like Rivers Cuomo's Weezer, the title track is dark and menacing enough to captivate. The super single "Veins" is one of the best things Nicholas has written since "Pushing The Senses" and finds its strength in the stellar arrangement, while "Dive" and "Sirens" follow the same line introducing us to the closure with "Landslide," a very hard and fast track halfway between nu-metal and pop-punk.

A beautiful collection, essential for lovers of the genre, that marks a point of twenty years of great alt-rock and simultaneously demonstrates that Feeder are alive and well, ready to continue honoring a splendid past while aiming for an equally brilliant future.

Best track: Just The Way I'm Feeling