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‘It’s a different world’: Feeder frontman on new album Torpedo and today’s music biz

On March 18, Feeder release their 11th studio album in the form of Torpedo, a brand new collection of songs that spans the sonic extremities of their unique brand of hook-laden rock. Frontman and songwriter Grant Nicholas speaks to Headliner about producing the new record and how the band has been able to so successfully navigate the choppy waters of the music industry for almost 30 years.

Torpedo, the follow-up to 2019’s Tallullah, the band’s most commercially successful record since 2002’s Comfort in Sound, is in many ways a very different beast to its predecessor, not least because it was written during lockdown. The album exhibits some of the band’s heaviest moments in years, while also offering intimate glimpses of Feeder at their most fragile.

Despite the fact that the record was written and recorded largely during the most stringent social distancing measures, the remote collaboration between Nicholas and fellow Feeder co-founder and bassist Taka Hirose during this time was far from a new concept, with each living at opposite ends of the country and being well-versed in the art of remote sessions.

To find out more about Torpedo and, as Nicholas elaborates throughout our conversation, its already written follow-up, we join him via Zoom at his North London home for a chat about the past, present and future of Feeder…

When did this new record first start to take shape?

Pre-lockdown we were looking forward to the second half of our Tallullah tour. The album did really well, as did the first half of the tour, but the second half was cancelled due to Covid. So we went into lockdown, but before that I did a bunch of writing and we did some recording. I sent some tracks to Taka and he put some bass on, so we had an album’s worth of stuff pre-Covid. Then it all came to a grinding halt and those songs were just left there, and we were doing what everybody else did, which was just staying at home doing very little. After a couple of months, doing a bit of gardening and all the jobs I’d been putting off for years, I just started writing again, so this album is really what I wrote during that time. And all the pre-Covid songs haven’t been used, so they will be on the next record. It’s all a bit back to front.

How did you manage to record these songs during lockdown?

I have a small studio at home where I do most of the Feeder stuff. Taka lives up north so I’ve hardly seen him through Covid, and he has a little set up so I can send him ideas for guide bass, then he’ll do his thing and send it back. That’s how we did the record. And we did a bit of that on the last album because these days that’s how records are made. The days of going off to California and spending £250,000, unless you’re a huge, huge artists, don’t happen very often. I wouldn’t say no to it! But I have the studio here, which is where we do guitars. We can’t do drums here so we managed to find times where we could get into studios to record them. But otherwise, it was all done here.

The songs just poured out of me and they had a slightly different vibe to the songs I’d written before lockdown, so I didn’t want to dilute it by just putting a few of those on this album. We really kept it focused and had this old school album approach and a lot of thought has gone into the track list and the artwork.

At first it was going to be a mini album for the fanbase, it wasn’t even going to be released properly. But I played it to some people and it got a great reaction, so we decided to put it out as a standalone record. It’s gone from being a mini album to, ‘OK, let’s make it a double album with all the pre-Covid songs’, and then we just thought it was too much. So, hopefully the next album will be out this time next year, but it’ll be those pre-Covid songs plus a few new ones I’ve just written. But they are very much connected, these albums. It’s the same artist doing the artwork for each.

Did you intend to explore the various strands of Feeder’s sound with this album from the outset?

The heavy and light dynamic is kind of a Feeder trademark. Even going back to our early work there has always been an acoustic track or songs with strings. I think it’s important to sequence it in a way so that it takes you back and forth between our different dynamics

The industry has changed so much. It's a different world. Grant Nicholas, Feeder

Tallullah was one of the most commercially successful albums you’ve ever had. Did that provide any additional pressure when setting out to write its successor?

No. The only time I ever really felt pressure was after Comfort In Sound because that was a really big record for us, but I don’t think it affected the writing. And I didn’t feel that at all with this record. I was very focused, in that we didn’t want to dilute it or tick too many boxes. I just wanted it to be what it is, and we stuck to that. It was a very natural album to make.

Did you produce the record yourself?

I co-produced it with Tim Roe and it was mixed by Chris Sheldon, who basically produced Polythene, our first album. He’s mixed most of our albums, so I often work with him. He’s a producer as well and he co-produced Generation Freakshow. We have a great team of people on it, Tim pushes me hard, I push him hard. It wasn’t that dissimilar to the way we made Tallullah. It was all recorded here; we did drums in different rooms.

Who are some of the producers that have influenced your approach to making records? And how do you define the role of a producer?

I’m more the old school producer, where I’m getting lyrics and arrangements right. Some producers engineer and produce, and others, like Steve Albini, just record the band and what they do. He doesn’t like to mess with the chemistry of the band. And then we’ve worked with people like Gil Norton, who’s worked with Foo Fighters, Pixies, Patti Smith, Echo and the Bunnymen. He’s really tough in the studio and pushes you really hard, but he’s great and I learnt so much from him. He’ll spend ages on arrangements, ages with the drummer. I wouldn’t event dare to say I’ve produced something if I hadn’t worked with those people. Daniel Lanois is absolutely amazing, Rick Rubin is quite unique. As for what influenced me, lots of stuff, from listening to ABBA as a kid to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Nick Drake, Fleetwood Mac, Peter Gabriel, The Sex Pistols, I’m a huge Police fan. The list goes on. Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, Neil Young, Tom Petty.

How has your creative process developed down the years?

It’s changed so much. If I think about what we spent on albums and producers in the ‘90s, it’s just a different process. People are now making huge albums in their bedrooms. Technology is amazing because you can do so much more. In the old days when you had to do stuff on tape - if you were lucky you might have a 48-track but it was usually 24. You had to know what you were doing, and you didn’t have auto tune and things like that. It was a different world and you had to be more organised. We still work in a semi old school way. Certain things we do are probably the same as when we first started - things like getting certain guitar sounds, but it is a very different world. It’s great but I do miss that excitement of turning up and not quite knowing what was going to happen.

How challenging was it navigating those big changes to the industry?

When it was happening you just adapted as you went along. I’m not all over things like social media. It can be a great thing, but it can also be a dangerous place, so I tread quite likely. But I embrace the good things you can get from it as well. Everything from the first time working on Pro Tools was a massive change, and then things like Facebook.

And the whole ‘what goes on tour stays on tour’ thing doesn’t really exist anymore. Everything is on show now, everyone has a camera phone. But it’s certainly taken a little bit of the rock ‘n’ roll out of it. You’d be amazed at how and when people try to take pictures of you. We’re not a big commercial band, but there have been times when [pauses] I remember once being really hungover and I had to fly from Belfast and I was in a bad way, and I’m lying on this bench, feeling like death, not even sure if I’ll be able to make it on to the plane, and there was some guy over me with his iPhone taking pictures of me. I haven’t seen the pictures yet!

You can listen to an extended version of this interview below.

Photos by Steve Gullick

Find out about Feeder's current tour dates here.