Expectations were high at the BIC on Thursday night. A sold out gig, the room full of post-pubescent teens, and the excellent Aqualung to warm us up - even lead singer Grant's parents were in attendance.

But somehow something just didn't gel…for a while at least. Feeder tumbled on stage with Grant Nicholas, charismatic bassist Taka Hirose, guitarist Dean Tidey and former Skunk Anansie drummer Mark Richardson, all partially obscured from view behind a dark curtain.

But even when that curtain was lifted away and the band was thrown into the spotlight, the sense of distance remained.

Die-hard Feeder fans were out in force, but so too were the end-of-term party goers in search of a pre-Christmas mosh to anything that vaguely rocked - and therein, perhaps, lay the problem.

The real fans embraced what was delivered and stuck with it, but the others seemed confounded, wondering what had happened to the riotous, light pop offerings of 2001.

Today's Feeder is a more sensitive, well rounded, serious and mature band, reinvented - subconsciously perhaps - since the tragic suicide of their drummer Jon Lee in 2002. They are now less about pop grunge thrash and much more about yearning melodies.

And so those kids at the front who didn't make a run to the bar were left gently swaying and tapping their feet to the wistful sounds of the successful fourth album, Comfort in Sound, while the lavish video backdrop of sky surfing and a waltzing Fred and Ginger artfully lifted them to heights the music alone might not reach.

The set may have lost its potency somewhere in the middle, but the band were at their strongest and most comfortable with the anthemic Forget About Tomorrow, Just a Day, and of course the celebratory, High.

Yet still it took until the inevitable Buck Rogers (which Grant and Taka must surely be sick to death of by now) to finally send the pit alive.

Seven Days in the Sun did the business too, and by the time they kicked off the majestic Just The Way I'm Feeling, the feel good factor had engulfed the sweating crowd. It's just a shame it took so long…

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