Feeder play LIVE and tell Chris Evans about doing ‘something different’ with their new album

Virgin Radio

10 Apr 2024, 11:03

Feeder played an excellent session on the Stool of Rock for Virgin Radio, and spoke about their brand new album.

The band joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with webuyanycar following of the release of double album Black/Red, which landed last Friday, 5th April. It is their 12th studio release, and features 18 brand new tracks.

Lead singer Grant Nicholas said: “We've always wanted to make a double album, but I've always got cold feet. But I thought, ‘You know what, after being a band for 30 years, we need to do something different.’ And we’ve got a lot of songs. I'm still writing a lot. So I thought, ‘Why not?’"

He added: “A lot of love and a lot of work has gone into it. And we've been extremely focused on it. And I think the album, hopefully, hasn't got any filler.

“It’s like two separate albums. So it's not one long listen. So, it gives you a break in the middle, you know, rather than it just being one long player.”

Talking about having been around for a while now, Grant said: “It seems a long time! We thought we'd last a while, but maybe 30 years is a bit longer than we expected!”

On how the band got together, he told Chris: “We met just by Camden tube station, because I was living on Camden Road and Taka [Hirose - bassist] put an ad in Loot - remember Loot? An ads paper - saying ‘bass player available’, so I called him up. And I thought, ‘He doesn't sound very English. I didn't know where he was from.’ His likes were Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, I thought ‘Sounds interesting.’ So we met in Camden over a cup of tea. It doesn't sound very rock n roll!”

Taka interjected: “I thought that we would go to the pub or something!”

Grant added: “And it all went from there.”

Alongside the release of the album, Feeder are in the midst of touring around the country with a number of in-store performances, album signings and band Q&As. Grant said: “It’s been such a great vibe, this tour, because we basically finished, we had about two days off after our UK tour, which was amazing. I've still not unpacked my main case. It's still in my living room. So there's quite a bit of washing to do, but we just went straight out, doing these instores and signings. In fact, I think it's been the busiest kind of week we've ever done actually in 30 years. It's been mad.”

Regarding how the band came up with their name, the vocalist and guitar player said: “There was a story about me having a goldfish called Feeder, but actually, really I think we were trying to sort of fit in with all the Britpop bands.

“The name kind of looked good on a board.

“We weren't a Britpop band, but we were playing with lots of those bands. We thought well, at least we fit in on the poster.”