The Feeling 'Twelve Stops & Home' album

The Feeling are five twentysomethings from Sussex and London who love pop music. Great big no-nonsense, hook-filled, giant-chorused pop music – music for the masses, only intelligent, with sunshine hooks and killer choruses that everyone can hum, from plumbers to professors.

Singer Dan Gillespie Sells, who admits to having had an indie phase once, says: "There are no guilty pleasures anymore. You're allowed to like Andrew Gold, ELO, Supertramp or 10cc. It's really liberating."

The Feeling are pop and proud. They're reclaiming the term.

HEY, HEY WE'RE THE FEELING

The Feeling are the new gods of cool M.O.R. Five twentysomethings from Sussex and London, they have come to make easy-listening hip. It's time to get out your Guilty Pleasures and rejoice! The Feeling are rehabilitating soft-rock.

"We're soft rock archeologists," says their drummer, Paul Stewart.

"It's more about not being self-conscious," adds bassist and backing vocalist Richard Jones.

Dan, who admits to having had an indie phase once, continues: "There are no guilty pleasures anymore. You're allowed to like Andrew Gold, ELO, Supertramp or 10cc. It's really liberating."

Richard agrees: "You can like anything! 10cc were amazing..."

Paul: "Their stuff was so varied - everything from reggae (Dreadlock Holiday) to soft-rock ballads (I'm Not In Love)."

The Feeling are pop and proud. They're reclaiming the term.

"Yes, 10cc were a pop group," says Richard. "So were The Beatles. So were Queen. We're not a jazz band, or a heavy metal band."

"We're pop," decides Paul, "but more in the '70s sense."

Like The Raspberries or, more recently, Jellyfish or The New Radicals, The Feeling are premier exponents of nouveau soft-rock.

Richard: "Is that a section in HMV?"

GET THE FEELING 2: THE MUSIC

The Feeling, as we were saying, like pop music. Great big no-nonsense, hook-filled, giant-chorused pop music, just like they used to make it. They cite Fleetwood Mac's Rumours as an example of where they're heading - music for the masses, only intelligent, with tunes that everyone can hum, from plumbers to professors.

"You can get away with murder in pop music," says Dan. "We like getting away with murder. Like great big choruses with great big hooks."

If there's a Lennon & McCartney - or rather, Becker-Fagen, Gouldman-Stewart, or Godley & Crème - in The Feeling, it's the hydra-headed Dan Gillespie, who handles the music and the words. The band, they say, have to "wrestle the songs out of him."

As a Queen fan, Dan admits he doesn't just like "concise pop songs" - he's also a bit partial to "prog epics with ludicrous outros."

This perfect blend of pop and prog will see the light of day on The Feeling's 2006 debut album. It will be a 12-track affair "with no fillers, all stonkers - a classic album."

It will also, explains Richard, be "lush and epic," while at the same time being, in Dan's words, "stripped-down." The singer cites early Elton John records, The Beatles' swansong and The Carpenters as examples of the feel The Feeling are after.

"They were epic but not lavishly orchestrated," says Dan. "'Rocket Man' is just bass, guitar, piano and drums, but it's vocally driven with not much else going on. 'Let It Be' was still powerful without the orchestration. It still had epic-ness; a melodic strength to it. Or 'Solitaire' by The Carpenters: that's a great example of a song that's epic but stripped down. The Carpenters were a big influence on me."

GET THE FEELING 3: THE LYRICS

The Feeling sing songs with titles like "Fill My Little World", "Never Be Lonely", "I Love It When You Call", "Spare Me" and "Strange". What are they trying to tell us? What's it all about?

Richard: "Deep mental trauma."

Paul: "We've all got our own D.M.T."

Dan: "You've got to be willing to bare your D.M.T. to the world."

Not that The Feeling make, as Dan puts it, "focus group therapy session music - I hate that." His lyrics are, he says, "quite feminine and honest", and his favourite lyricists are Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. He's into "joyful wallowing."

Has he been hurt?

Dan: "By love? A lot of the time. I've been through things that everyone's been through. The key is to express it in a way that doesn't make everyone feel sick."

Who's the ultimate songwriter?

"Barry Gibb," says Dan without hesitating. "He's written so many stonking great pop songs. And Stevie Wonder. And Bill Withers: 'Lean On Me' is sheer perfection. But we're not so much into bands or artists as we are great songs."

Who are they trying to beat, in songwriting terms? The feeling among The Feeling is that rivalry sucks.

"For someone like Brian Wilson, competition between The Beach Boys and The Beatles worked," says Richard. "It pushed him on to create Pet Sounds. But it's not a driving force for us."

GET THE FEELING 4: THE HISTORY

The Feeling, who are all between 25 and 27, are overnight sensations with a bit of a past, cutting their teeth as session musicians on a variety of mainstream and marginal recordings. They're all from Sussex, except Dan, who's from London. Paul, Kevin and Ciaran even went to the same school: Paul and Ciaran were in the same year. The Sussex axis of the band have been friends for 13 years. They met Dan and Richard at music college in Croydon 10 years ago, and they've been working together in various forms ever since.

Five years ago they went through their "Hamburg era" when they appeared for several seasons in the Alps as a covers band who specialised in versions of Rolling Stones, Kinks, Stevie Wonder and Beatles songs as well as rocked-up versions of '80s hits like "Take On Me" by A-ha, "Walk Like An Egyptian" by The Bangles and "Jump" by Van Halen: "Whatever got the crowd going."

The band still go back there, to try out new material.

"It's our spiritual home," says Richard, adding more seriously: "That's how we got good at playing."

GET THE FEELING 5: THE PLAYERS

The Feeling are, let's not be coy, superb musicians who have spent years honing their craft. That's not to imply that virtuoso expertise and dexterous professionalism in rock'n'roll are a necessity. But it certainly helps if you can play your instruments. And these cats can play.

But who inspired them, as individuals? Paul?

"Loads of people! Mick Fleetwood, Bernard Purdie, Roger Taylor and Ringo are all big influences. There seems to be a misconception that Ringo was crap, but some of his parts were genius," says the drummer. "I'd love to contribute as much to our sound as he did to The Beatles."

Dan?

"Freddy! Karen Carpenter was one of the greatest vocal technicians ever. She had a clean, pure voice, only filled with oodles of emotion. It was heartbreaking. But it doesn't have to be flourish-y or over-elaborate. I'd choose Freddie Mercury for his stage presence, and Neil Young for his guitar-playing. I'd like to be Karen Carpenter in Neil Young's body. With Freddie Mercury's trousers."

Richard?

"I like to get involved with the whole arrangement and see how I can compliment it with my part. Bassists like Paul McCartney or John Deacon were great in this way. For technicality, I'd pick Jaco Pastorius [jazz-rock fusion supremo] or James Jamerson [Motown] "

Kevin?

"Slash and Brian May - Slash for the sheer attitude of his playing, and Brian May for the fact that his solos are always an indispensable part of every Queen song."

Ciaran?

"Maybe Joe Zawinul," says the quiet but deadly keyboardist, and you've got to admire a band that reference groups like Earth Wind & Fire and Weather Report. "But my favourites would be Garth Hudson of The Band and Tom Waits."

GET THE FEELING 6: THE FUTURE

The Feeling have an assured future. With dead-cert smash hits like "Fill My Little World", the joyous harmonies of "I Want You Now", the lilting acoustic and electric guitars and micro-melodies of "Never Be Lonely", the surging keyboard refrains and pop riffs of "Love It When You Call", touching piano ballads like "Strange" and "Spare Me", and the awesomely infectious "Helicopter" with its glorious shades of Pilot's "January", pretty soon you won't be able to - hey! - fight The Feeling. They'll just be there, on our radios, a part of all our lives.

Richard is even more certain about what lies ahead.

"Unless there's something seriously wrong," he says, quite matter of fact, "by this time next year we will be having hit records."

Believe it.

The Feeling are:

Dan Gillespie Sells - vocals & guitar
Richard Jones - bass
Kevin Jeremiah - guitar
Ciaran Jeremiah - keyboards
Paul Stewart - drums

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The Feeling - Twelve Stops & Home