Despite their youthful looks and exuberance THE FEELING is a traditional old style rock and roll band honing their live skills in numerous small pubs and clubs venues before hitting the big time with their first album ‘Twelve Stops From Home’, even playing upstairs across the road at The Little Civic as frontman Dan Gillespie-Sells gleefully recounted during the gig.

The show opened with a montage of You Tube video tributes uploaded by numerous fans displayed on the giant white curtain that covered the front of the stage. As Gillespie-Sells ripped down the curtain the band burst into ‘Thought It Was Over’, their first single release from the second album released early this year and their loyal audience sprang to life to join in with every second of the 105 minute show. The style of their stage presence differs quite significantly from the soft rock/pop studio recordings that are so widely given national radio air play, since it has a much edgier rock feel whilst still retaining the catchy melodies and harmonies. Gillespie-Sells soon has his fans eating out of his hands as they play along with him in ‘Fill My Little World’ and singing the counter-melody at the end of ‘Never Be Lonely’. In fact his stage presence has very much the feel of Freddie Mercury or Phil Lynott in the way in which he engages the crowd throughout the gig. ‘Without You’ follows the sing-a-long, a moving number documenting their reaction to the Virginia Tech massacre, the band were touring stateside at that time.

The middle segment with ‘Kettles On’ and ‘Helicopter’ demonstrate both the melodious structure of the bands song writing, their love of an edgey rock crescendo and their tight live performance based on Kevin Jeremiah’s guitar breaks to Richard Jones’ bass through to the excellent Paul Stewart on drums. Ciaran Jeremiah adds plenty of glitz and sparkle with his keyboard playing, whilst relishing his moment on lead vocal in the ‘Fight for Your Right’ encore.

Dan Gillespie-Sells exuberance and interaction with his audience escalated during the high octane end to ‘Helicopter’, he dived and crowd-surfed his way to the back of the hall reappearing on the balcony to wow amongst the masses with his solo acoustic version of ‘Strange’. The use of ‘Miss You’ and ‘Strange’ further demonstrated the QUEEN influences mimicking the way in which the ballads can be used to break up a long set and showcase raw talent. Although I did find the use of ‘Popcorn’ a little odd, but the crowd seemed to lap it up along with everything else that was served up.

‘Turn it Up’ gets the set back in the rocking groove, ‘Sewn’ affords Dan yet another opportunity to engage the audience in another sing-along and ‘Love It When You Call’ brought the show to a natural high energy conclusion. The audience were treated to one final piece of THE FEELING showmanship when the band appeared drum-playing through the auditorium for their first encore of ‘We Can Dance’ dressed in full Sergeant Pepper style regalia.

All in all an extremely enjoyable, entertaining night. Okay there are plenty in the mainstream music press that want to slate THE FEELING as being bland pop with their songs containing little new material just merely mimicking the late 70s/early 80s of ELO, QUEEN, SUPERTRAMP, 10CC and PINK FLOYD. However, I would counter that this is a proper rock band that write their own music, are accomplished musicians that give a very high quality live performance.

Set List
Thought It Was Over / Fill My Little World / Never Be Lonely / Without You / Don’t Make Me Sad / Rose / When The Truth Comes Out / Take On Me / Kettle On / Miss You / Helicopter / Strange / Popcorn / Turn It Up / Sewn / Join With Us / Love It When You Call / We Can Dance (Greatest Show on Earth) / Fight For Your Right.

Rating: 4.8/5.0
Tim Statham