Helen Pidd 

The Feeling

Leeds University
  
  


The Feeling are often filed under Guilty Pleasures - like Chicago or Bonnie Tyler, acceptable to like in public only with one eyebrow raised. Their record may be saccharine, but live, there's nothing shameful about loving the Feeling. Who can resist whizzy dance moves, Bee Gee harmonies, lighting colour-coordinated to the songs and a glitzy silver-tiled piano?

The sharp-tailored quintet are sometimes lumped together with fellow radio-friendly pop rockers Orson, but the difference is that the Feeling have more than one killer tune. Almost every track from their No 2-selling album, Twelve Stops and Home, is perfect for a singalong. It is hard not stutter along to the "b-b-b-b-b-b-baby, I think I'm going c-c-c-crazy" bit of Never Be Lonely, even if it is an outrageous Bachman-Turner Overdrive/ Wilson Phillips rip-off. And everyone in the room succumbs to the "ner-ner, ner-ner-ner-ner" refrain of Sewn.

Singer Dan Gillespie-Sells came out this summer, but that hasn't cooled the desire of his female fans, who scream when he suggests he might take his sweaty kit off. He is a brilliant, energetic frontman. He tells a story about the band's penniless days when they survived on two-for-one bottles of pink wine, only for the lights to turn coral as the opening notes of Rosé strike up.

The new material aired tonight would suggest the Feeling aren't a flash in the pan. Join With Us, pencilled in for the next album, combines the bounce of Maxwell's Silver Hammer with Cool for Cats, and has the crowd jumping. A pleasure then, and not a guilty one.

· At Brixton Academy, London, on December 9. Box office: 0870 771 2000.

 

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