Horsham/Crawley's The Feeling back with new album

And it is off the back of hitting the road with Sophie on their Kitchen Disco tour that he is now back in business with The Feeling once again.

Their new album Loss. Hope. Love will be released on May 6 – their first studio album since the self-titled The Feeling six years ago.

In between times of course, there has been the huge success of the smash hit musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, composed by the band’s front man Dan Gillespie Sells. And there has also been the pandemic…

All of which makes it great to be back in action for a band with its roots very much in West Sussex.

Dan Gillespie Sells is a north Londoner, but Richard is from Forest Row,

Kevin and Ciaran Jeremiah are from Hor

sham and Paul Stewart is from Copthorne. Kevin, Ciaran and Paul went to secondary school in Crawley, and Richard met Dan in The Brit School foyer when he was 16.

Inevitably the title Loss. Hope. Love makes the new album sound like it was specifically about the pandemic, but as Richard says the title is actually a lyric from a song that was written maybe five years ago: “But really you do find that a lot, that art is so often a reflection of what is going on in everybody’s lives. A lot of the things that we were drawn to in our songs were written some time ago but the themes just keep cropping up and it feels the right time because some of the ideas seem to reflect the times that we have been through.

“But it is also loss and hope and love more generally.

“We are all in our 40s now and grown up and with children and we know what it is to lose loved ones and parents and grandparents. We’ve all reached that stage in our life and it can be a difficult stage and especially this year when we have all lived through something quite extraordinary and something quite alien.

“Making music is something that has always been quite cathartic for us in a way, a way of just putting our emotions into something and it just seems to be that these songs are focused on these kinds of things. There is loss but there is also hope and ultimately there is always love. Even when we have lost the person we love, the love remains.”

Richard reckons it must have been in about 1995 or 96 that he met Dan: “We worked on about three or four different bands before The Feeling started coming together. Paul started drumming with us when he got to the school a year later when we were 17.

“And the band just emerged. We were amazed when got to the point where we had been in the band half our lives and now of course it is a lot more than half our lives. It is way beyond that now!

But inevitably that shared experience over time gives the band something very special:

“On stage the communication that we have between us can be just a nod or a look or raised eyebrow and we just know what that means and when you are making music that’s what you have to have. Nobody else would understand it!”

And now there’s a sense of coming out the other side: “I do think a lot has changed. I have definitely found things so much better now that we are out playing live again.

“I found the first six to eight months of the pandemic were OK in some ways. I have been doing live shows since I was a teenager and actually six to month eight months off doing live gigs and having a break was OK, but then when it got to a year and then when it got to a year and a half, I started to feel quite anxious about it.

“You just started worrying about whether it was actually ever going to be OK, what it was going to be like to be going back out there playing live.

“It was a worry about being on the stage and just being back in that environment again and whether it would feel weird. It’s also about match fitness.

“If you were a footballer and you play your first game for two years, you wouldn’t be able to do it. But in fact once we got back on stage it was just like riding a bike. There was a moment that was a bit weird but then it just felt like it always did.”

Which isn’t to say it doesn’t all now come with a different appreciation.

“I have always loved it but I’m loving it, if possible, more than ever or at least certainly more than I have done in a few years. I’ve been touring with Sophie, my wife, and just being on the road together and playing together was great. When you do it year in, year out, it can start to feel a little bit like a job, just to be playing in front of people.”

But that’s changed now.

During the pandemic Richard and Sophie went viral with their online Kitchen Disco parties, a real glimpse into their family life but also a lifeline to so many millions of people so keen to have just a little bit of fun in their locked-down isolated lives.

Earlier this year Richard and Sophie took their Kitchen Disco out on tour.

“And it just felt really cathartic. There were lots of people coming to see these shows that had not necessarily been fans of Sophie’s before but were coming because of the Kitchen Discos we did and because the Kitchen Discos had helped them. And we found them helpful too. They certainly helped us and helped us with our mental health.

“And doing it afterwards was a beautiful way to bring closure to it. It was one of those things that we only did because there was a lockdown but it was actually a fun part of all the things that we were going through.

“It happened because of the lockdown but actually it was really joyful and positive, and on the tour we were finally able to get back in the same room as these people who had enjoyed it and it was just lovely.”

And for Richard it’s certainly part of the balance in his life: “It is great to have those two sides. Certainly for about ten years all that I did was with The Feeling and it was full time for us but in the last few years I’ve got back to working with Sophie on albums.

“Dan wrote the Jamie musical and I’ve also found that by doing other things it has really allowed us – when we come back to doing The Feeling – to have a much greater clarity about what the band is and what we want to do. I feel it has taken us back to understanding our strengths and what it is about the music that we want to make.”

Self-produced, predominantly at their East London studio during lockdown the album is released on May 6 on Island Records – 15 years since their multi-million selling debut record Twelve Stops and Home

Since the last Feeling album six years ago, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie has quickly become one the most successful new musicals of the last decade. Premiering at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, before transferring to London’s Apollo Theatre, the production was an overnight success amongst audiences and critics, receiving rave reviews and gaining five Olivier Award nominations.

The Feeling have also announced a series of UK dates starting in October and including Sunday October 30 at Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion.

The album

Loss. Hope. Love tracklisting:

1. High Like You

2. There Is No Music

3. Never Gave Up

4. There’s a Word For It

5. On The Edge

6. Lost

7. Love People

8. No One To Blame

9. Cascade