Dan Gillespie Sells – vocals & guitar
Richard Jones – bass
Kevin Jeremiah – guitar
Ciaran Jeremiah – keyboards
Paul Stewart – drums
Three years ago The Feeling were right in the middle of what bassist Richard Jones describes as, “that mad wave of excitement” that greeted their arrival at the very heart of the British pop scene. Here was a band in love with Wings and ELO and Elton John and 10cc – after years of po-faced indie no-marks they were the most brilliant, bracing breath of fresh air. A band who cut their teeth playing joyous Abba, Buggles and Bangles covers in an Alpine ski resort, a band interested in “great big choruses with great big hooks” were, quite rightly, being heralded as one of our very best new bands. So, somewhere in the middle of an endless UK tour, they were doing a day of radio interviews.
“It was National Doodle Day,” laughs singer Dan Gillespie-Sells. “Someone asked us all to do a quick drawing…”
“And Dan and I both drew a spiral with these little men walking into the vortex,” interrupts Richard. “We had spent so much time together we had begun thinking the same things.”
The twin doodles had a lasting impact on the two. The idea of the journey becoming the destination resonated particularly strongly with the two people who drew them and the songs that make up the band’s third record, the wonderful Together We Were Made.
Recorded in Dan’s home (and the band’s studio) – a converted East London pub decorated in glorious, post-WW11, end-of-an-Empire style and rechristened The Dog House - this new record marks a special landmark for Dan and Richard. They have now been working together for half their lives. Richard laughs. “I’m a fan! Dan writes stuff and I just get it - his songs move me.”
The Feeling, it would appear, are right at the top of their game. Set My World On Fire has already been nominated as the official theme song for the BBC’s coverage of the Cricket World Cup (broadcast February 19th to April 3rd). Built around a shimmering calypso beat, it is both intimate and epic.
The reggae-scented (“Loving reggae is very British,” offers Dan) Another Soldier considers how it feels to have to fight for things all the time. “You know that feeling when you’re not in control?” Dan asks. “Horrible.”
“There’s a sample of (his wife) Sophie (Ellis-Bextor) in there too,” Richard says. “We were in a shooting range in New Orleans. She pulled the trigger and screamed, so there’s the shot and the scream on there!”
The raucous, highly descriptive Come And Get It was inspired by the soundtrack to Bugsy Malone. “We have stupid parties here,” Dan says, looking around the Dog House. “The song is a nod to being completely stupid and jubilant and decadent.
“The bassline is very Stevie Wonder,” Richard nods.
Leave Me Out Of It features a duet with Ellis-Bextor and is built around a fantastically infectious groove and a melody played on an old keyboard Dan’s mum bought for him when he was a teenager.
“It has a nostalgia to it,” he says. “There is a distinct emotional response there. The main chorus goes, ‘You don’t know what love is until you’ve had mine…’ which is nice if a girl says it, but creepy if I say it! So Sophie’s voice felt perfect there.
The band’s innate way with a ballad is well displayed on Say No, which has a rich, Gospel edge. “The melody has this great shape to it,” Dan says, “so I hung a song off it. It’s very us! It has these over-laying melodies – that’s a core thing in our records. I picked up a guitar when I was 4 and I’ve never, ever looked back. I spend all my time doing this and I don’t want to do anything else. There are no other goals!”
Between 2005 and 2008 The Feeling had 10 days off. The relentless touring, fed by a desire to see the band perform that spread ever further around the globe, was something they all enjoyed. Not many bands are as enthusiastic about a three month, coast-to-coast US tour – with the odd day off in Norfolk, Virginia – as this one is, but at some point it had to end.
“We were knackered,” Richard says. “We had begun to understand how bands end up going crazy or killing each other.”
“I was losing my brain,” nods Dan.
Instead of fighting or falling out the band decided to take a year off and indulge themselves a little. Dan took helicopter lessons. Richard flew fixed wing aircraft (and had another baby). Drummer Paul Stewart bought a drag racer and got married.
“We lived out all the clichés!” enthuses Richard. But within a couple of months they’d got restless. The band decamped to “a little retreat” in Wiltshire where they locked themselves away for two weeks and wrote a great swathe of new songs. There were trips to Nashville (where they met the legendary producer Bob Ezrin who announced himself a fan) and Sweden, and all the while the songs kept coming.
In 2010 they returned to the Alps to launch their own, completely personalised “Little World Festival”, they’re headlining alongside Squeeze and Ed Harcourt this year.
Back in The Dog House the band developed a fondness for, “sleepover jam sessions”, where they would just play and play for the joy of playing and watch the new ideas come out.
Along the way they teamed up with the “phenomenal producers” The Freemasons (who have worked with Ellis-Bextor and remixed Kelly Rowland, Solange Knowles and Jamiroquai) who would work alongside the band adding “fairy-dust” to the these new productions.
“It was like a hobby again,” says Dan, “it was wonderfully self indulgent. But we needed that time. If you’re doing records based on songwriting – as opposed to just record making – you need time. You have to live with the material and find out what it is you’re really in love with. Songs can have funny qualities – they can surprise you – and time is the only thing that will tell you that. The best songs come with a line and a melody and chord change. It’s good to turn your brain off and go somewhere nuts. Your brain can make things ugly, your subconscious is more beautiful.”
“Then, one day, we thought, it’s been long enough,” Richard says. “This can’t be our Chinese Democracy!”
So last October they took the songs to Island Records who are now about to release Together We Were Made. And what songs they are. This is a Feeling record that sounds, unashamedly, like The Feeling, but with a host of new twists and turns to explore. “If we tried to not to sound like The Feeling we’d still sound like The Feeling,” Dan says. “Think of The Beatles or Elton John or Tina Turner – the voice is the identity.”
“Whatever we write will always sound like Dan’s voice and our band and at some point all our backing vocals will probably come soaring in!” laughs Richard. “That is our identity and you should never, ever be scared of your identity.”