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The Features are about to come over to the UK, with a date at The Roadhouse in Manchester on 22nd April. High Voltage managed to catch up with them to discuss their relationship with Kings of Leon, Their views on the UK music scene and why drinking out of date milk is bad....
"In rock & roll years we're geriatric" said drummer Rollum Haas. He's right - despite many reviews labelling "]The Features as the 'latest new and up-coming American band to hit the UK', these boys have been around for almost 2 decades and are on their second album - "For a band to be together as long as we have and only have two full lengths and four EPs to show for it is a little embarrassing".
That said, the second album is something rather special. Some Kind of Salvation was recently reviewed in HV and has been met with critcial acclaim by the British music press. Although the band previously released the album in 2008, their second attempt is being assisted by their well-known new label bosses - The Kings of Leon. This is a relationship that's been born out of friendship as much as it is about being taken under the wing of a well-known band: "We've been buddies with them for a while. They started a label and asked us to be on it. Seeing as we had no money, no label, and the biggest band in the world was asking us, it seemed like a good idea."
The support of the Followill family couldn't have come at a better time for The Features. Some Kind of Salvation was self-released in 2008, and although the band have learned some lessons since then ("Matt learned how to grow a beard. Roger learned to not drink out of date milk. Mark learned that music fills an empty belly") it was a release that co-incided with a difficult period for the band. Their Universal deal ended in a messy divorce after a disagreement over The Features doing an advert for a famous American bank. Although the situation set the band back, they remain positive about where it eventually lead them; "Our A&R lady committed to it without asking us first. They wanted to put the song on the album and use it as a lead off single. We were about to go into the studio to record the next record after nearly a solid year of them rejecting demos, so the timing was terrible. The simple truth is that if the label had any belief in usl, we wouldn't have been dropped for that. It shook us up quite a bit, but I've never been happier than with where we're at now... That was just a ridiculous, no win, circumstance".
It is with this positive demeanour that The Features will be arriving in Manchester this month with a frenetic show gathering some serious hype. The Features are a bevvy of dirty soul rock with more deadly hooks than a 'Enemies of Peter Pan Convention'. It's the sort of radio friendly rock that can easily find listeners on these shores, but when asked about their thoughts on the current UK scene, the response was characteristically blunt: "(The current British music scene) seems like it's in shambles. Music trends seem to just pop up, so who knows how long it will last. When we toured the UK for our first album, Exhibit A, the post-Strokes trend was still going strong. Looking back on it, their success got a lot of bands who'd been around for a while record deals, including us. It seems like the US just has better groups right now. And that's coming from someone who grew up being an Anglophile."
Honest and passionate. HV highly recommends checking out the show at the end of April to see if the hype is justified. TAGS: The Features, The Roadhouse Words by: Mick Cooper
Links:
The Features - Myspace
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