Feeder

Feeder's story starts with Reel, a band Grant Nicholas put together in 1992 on vocals and guitar with drummer Jon Lee and bassist Simon Blight, all 3 of them refugees from a group called Raindancer. Blight left before the year was out, a parade of session bassists came and went, and once Taka Hirose took the bass job in 1994 they became Feeder and signed to the Echo label. They're Welsh, from Newport, and they came up without ever signing to a major label in Britain.

What they play is big, brawny guitar rock that borrows grunge's weight and Britpop's melodic knack. Polythene, the 1997 debut album, has "High", a gorgeous, wide-open slow burner that sounds like sunlight coming through the fuzz, and it's the song that has kept their name alive on the countdowns. Echo Park and its lead single, "Buck Rogers", brought them mainstream attention in 2001, and an MTV Europe Music Award nomination came that year too.

Tragedy followed: Jon Lee died in January 2002. Nicholas and Hirose carried on with former Skunk Anansie drummer Mark Richardson, and Comfort in Sound arrived later that year, with "Come Back Around" hitting hard and bright. They've kept going ever since, twelve albums and more than a million copies sold at home.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.