The Feeling - Twelve Stops And Home (Island)

All this broo-ha-ha surrounding the World Cup will only end in tears, y’know. Build it up, hype it up, clad yourself in patriotic red and white, get a few crates in and rub your hands with excited glee – but when England get knocked out, don’t come crying to us. See, we would never allow ourselves to get that excited about something, because the inevitable disappoint hurts so much harder.

But no matter how much we tried to downplay the arrival of the debut album from The Feeling, inside we were doing backflips at the mere thought. Which bodes well for England this summer, as Twelve Stops And Home is without a doubt the greatest record of 2006 so far. We could get used to this positivity lark.

As if the sheer magic of Sewn and Fill My Little World hadn’t already paved the way for Twelve Stops And Home, we’re presented with a selection of gorgeously cheery gems that match – if not surpass – the aforementioned singles. From the jittery affection of Never Be Lonely to the adorable just-this-side-of-Eurovision gladness displayed in Love It When You Call, involuntary smiles are a constant accompaniment throughout.


While the more solemn moments of Twelve Stops And Home are few and far between, they add to the tremendously effective diversity of the album rather than dampen the mood. Rosé (think a compound of Evanescence’s My Immortal and Coldplay’s Fix You, without the operatic drama of the former and the overindulgent cries of the latter) sits comfortably amongst the bursts of sunshine, proving The Feeling are capable of far more than picturesque Prozack’d anthems.

Twelve Stops And Home isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s happy, it’s earnest, it’s friendly. And while it's not without edge, it’s – dare we say it – cute. It’s just the type of album pretentious musos will be scowling into their soy lattes about for months. And it’s about time a band was brave enough to make this album. For that, The Feeling deserve some respect, if not your complete adulation.