History
The Feelers are: James Reid (vocals/guitar), Matt Thomas (bass), and Hamish Gee (percussion).The Feelers are a trio from Christchurch, New Zealand, who are known for their tasteful blend of guitars, soulful melodies, and cutting edge electronics.
The band caught it's first break when it won the South Island battle of the bands. Which led to eventually being signed by Warner to record a few singles and then their debut LP Superystem.
Superystem was released in 1998 and spawned 5 singles. Pressure Man, Space Cadet, Pull The Strings, and the crossover hit Venus. Each single was released commercially with a variety of B-sides.
Superystem was a huge success and catapulted the feelers into the spotlight. It was also released world wide, but without support from the label, and not much international touring, it pretty much fizzeled out internationally.
In the following two years The Feelers seemed to dissapear completely. The then-official-site, www.thefeelers.com, was taken off-line, and no information was available anymore. Fan-sites died out slowly without any news coming forth. Some of the rumours circulating were that The Feelers had broken up, or they had lost their label. No one knew.
In 2000 The Feelers released the double a-side. World Away / As Good As It Gets showed The Feelers were still around and making great music. The songs were maturer and showed a natural evolution for them as song-writers. As Good As It Gets was a song written for the Kiwi Film "Savage Honeymoon".
Apparently director Mark Beesely showed James Reid a rough cut of the film, and asked if he could write a song for it. James agreed, and wrote As Good As It Gets. Argueably his simplest and most mature effort as a song writer to date. Bessely thought the song was perfect and was highly impressed by James' abilities.
Another year passed with little tidbits of news slipping out. The new album would be released in a few months. This would come up every few months.
Finally, Communicate was scheduled to be released September 28th 2001, and the first single Astronaut hit the air. The song was poppier than the previous effort, and showed the bands evolution. A new website, www.thefeelers.net, was created.
Communicate was released on a delayed date of October 12th 2001, due to Astronaut's unexpected success in the NZ top 50. It gave the single more time to do better, before the album was released.
Communicate showcases a wiser, more sonic, more diverse Feelers sound. The album was produced by Gil Norton, who has previously worked with the Foo fighters and the Pixies. The album took 4 months to record, and Dave Grohl is a big fan of it. As are the members of Coldplay. It was recorded in London, and features 13 songs, which were chiseled down from 50 demos, and 90 songs which were written after Supersystem.
Majority fan opinion is that Communicate could possibly be a break-out album internationally for the hard working kiwi-band.
That is as good as it gets.
