Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The pilgrimage has become a word more associated with its religious connections, with its sense of selflessness and devotion to a God so engrained that you are willing to put the body through torment just to prove your commitment; and yet there is no need to head to Canterbury for a selection of tales that showcase support, to attachment, and an enthusiasm, perhaps all that is needed is the road to Newport, and rather than accompany Chaucer’s muses, we instead find ourselves as escorts to Grant Nicholas and Taka Hirose of Feeder.
Black/Red, the new album by the effervescent duo, is one uncontained by the journey, and indeed could be argued to be one of pointed grandeur, and one possibly that has been brewing since 2012’s Generation Freakshow.
The album is fierce, it is ambitious, and reflects grandly in its showcase of being a double offering, an expedition of two halves with the extreme of a shared vision and grasp of where the final meeting place for the travellers is situated.
A double album, almost a finesse of the concept stitching itself together as warnings, allusions, and a crafting of love that is the foundation of the group’s incredible time as one of the searingly sincere performers of their generation, and alongside others such as The Manic Street Preachers and The Alarm to whom the term legend is proudly deserved.
Listeners will always look to the interplay between Messers Nicholas and Hirose, especially since they effectively became a twosome in name, and Black/Red does not disappoint; and as the magnitude of tracks such as Playing With Fire, Vultures, the sheer audacity of The Knock, Sleeping Dogs Lie, Lost In The Wilderness, Here Comes The Hurricane, and the crushing finale of Ghosts On Parade, the sense of ferocity and tension build with sublime familiarity and one that explodes with resonance the further the album progresses.
Two sides of a story, a travelogue of experience, a journey that takes you back home but with the mind filled with tales from mouths of those who accompanied you along the way; the pilgrimage reaches its end for now, but on the basis of this album there are more pilgrims ready to place bet the house on black and red.
Ian D. Hall