The Feeling

Talk about being hooked on The Feeling. This U.K. band delivers an amalgam of harmonic melodies and catchy choruses that reaches full fruition on its Cherrytree/Interscope EP, Four Stops and Home.

The quintet's sonic touchstones range from the classic (the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, Queen, The Carpenters and the Beach Boys) to the more esoteric (10cc, Abba, the Human League, and the Pet Shop Boys) to the timeless (Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen).

I'm very restless about my influences, explains the band's chief songwriter and lyricist, singer/guitarist Dan Gillespie. I've never been prepared to just listen to one thing enough for it to affect me overall. I ' m just incredibly greedy to hear more and more pop gems.

Its an approach that has created a whole new category of music for fans starved for the golden age of Top 40 radio, with the sprightly sing-along pleasures of Sewn. Then there's the metal guitar rave-ups which make "Helicopter" so dynamic in concert.

It ' s something that happens live and came naturally for us, says Dan. We're all secret Iron Maiden fans. And that's what I love about Queen. They randomly and sometimes even violently, go into a quite mad Brian May prog-rock section.

The Feeling has been together in its current incarnation for a little more than two years, but the individual members have played with each other off and on for almost a decade since meeting in school. They cut their performing teeth as a covers band playing a pair of two-hour-plus shows every night for snowboarders in the French Alps, like a colder Beatles-in- Hamburg! "We played our asses off," says Gillespie about the experience, "then we got up the next morning and hit the slopes. We really bonded. Touring now is easy compared to that."

After playing a one-off performance last spring at Austin's South by Southwest Festival, The Feeling are looking forward to playing for more North American audiences, with club shows planned for New York, L.A. and Toronto.America is the land of radio music, says Dan. I feel positive about coming to the U.S. because that's where we come from. Our music is not part of any trend. We want to come across as straightforward and honest.