Heaven knows what the Sunday Times was listening to, let alone thinking when they wrote that The Feature’s Matt Pelham was a ‘vocal hybrid of Pete Shelley, Jilted John and Jarvis Cocker’. They certainly weren’t listening to this record, that’s for sure. So let’s make amends. What you have here, ladies and gentlemen, is in fact more in the way of the lightly frazzled rock we’ve come to expect from the psychedelic overtures of The Flaming Lips, The Polyphonic Spree, Mercury Rev and the Elephant 6. Christ, yes even The Shins. And although these are as close as you get, title track ‘The Beginning (week one)’ has far more of the Franz Ferdinands, the Raptures and the Hot Hot Heats about it: swirly new-wave keyboards and organ stabs, psychotic drumming and lots of starting and stopping. Magnificent in it’s own shoddy and inebriated way. Complete madness and utterly meaningless down one side. Infectious and profound down the other.
Whilst the ska-inflected ‘Walk You Home’ only serves to extend this remit further, the gorgeous fragile balladry of ‘Bumble Bee’ lures this wacky-coloured beast in an altogether different direction. Whimsical, gentle and delivered with the same faltering tenderness as anything by the Lips, it’s a sunny little chamberpot of rainbows, and ‘Two By Two’ is no stranger to beautiful, starry-eyed nuttiness either. And with the blistering and raucous ‘The Way It’s Meant To Be’ concluding the set, it’s evident The Features have more than a few surprises in their arsenal.
The best things in life come in threes. The Lips, The Features, The Sprees.