''Silent Cry'' is the sixth studio album by Welsh
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
band
Feeder. It was released by
Echo
In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound that arrives at the listener with a delay after the direct sound. The delay is directly proportional to the distance of the reflecting surface from the source and the list ...
, on 16 June 2008, on CD, deluxe CD, vinyl, and digital download. It was the follow-up to 2005's ''
Pushing the Senses
''Pushing the Senses'' is the fifth studio album by Welsh rock band Feeder. It was released on Echo, Liberation Music and PIAS on 31 January 2005 in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Europe, while being released on Pony Canyon in J ...
'' and in terms of all albums, the highly successful
singles album in 2006. The first single, "
We Are the People", preceded the album, being released on 9 June. It was their last album to feature Mark Richardson on Drums before departing in 2009.
The album was recorded at the Crypt Studios in
North
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography.
Etymology
T ...
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, with the help of long-time friend of the band Matt Sime. Like their 1999 album ''
Yesterday Went Too Soon
''Yesterday Went Too Soon'' is the second studio album by Welsh rock band Feeder. It was released on 30 August 1999 on The Echo Label.
''Yesterday Went Too Soon'' entered the UK charts at #8, after a decent amount of critical success. The tit ...
'', the album was self-produced. Three tracks ("
We Are the People", "Itsumo" and "Fires") feature backing vocals by Sarah Clark- bassist and singer wit
Bang Bangs a project signed to Sime's publishing company Black Circle.
Despite the problems that occurred behind the scenes at the band's then record label Echo, which resulted in their dissolution, the album managed to debut at #8 in the official
UK Albums Chart
The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts C ...
, but still became their first ever album not to go silver. The song "Miss You" is also credited to being featured on the video game
Midnight Club: Los Angeles.
The album's second and final single, "
Tracing Lines / Silent Cry
Tracing Lines and Silent Cry are the double a-side singles from Feeder, and was released on 25 August 2008.
Both songs, 'Tracing Lines' and 'Silent Cry' are taken from their sixth album, Silent Cry
''Silent Cry'' is the sixth studio album b ...
", was released on 25 August as a download only, but failed to chart. It was their last release on Echo after 14 years.
Reception and problems during album campaign
The album was given a mixed response critically, only scoring a 56/100 on the reviews aggregator
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, indicating "average or mixed reviews".
[ Commercially the album also had a poor response in terms of overall sales, failing to gain a silver sales certification. However, in terms of peak chart position the album was a modest success, charting in the ]UK Albums Chart
The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts C ...
at a respectable #8, despite first single " We Are the People" not receiving any major mainstream airplay from stations such as BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It specialises in modern popular music and current chart hits throughout the day. The station provides alternative genres at night, including electronica, dance, ...
, making it the first Feeder single since 1997's "Crash
Crash or CRASH may refer to:
Common meanings
* Collision, an impact between two or more objects
* Crash (computing), a condition where a program ceases to respond
* Cardiac arrest, a medical condition in which the heart stops beating
* Couch su ...
" not to be playlisted by the station. (The single itself charted at #25)
In the second week, the album then dropped to #30 and then #60 before leaving the top 75. This meant that the album became their lowest-selling at the time. Frontman Grant Nicholas
Grantley Jonathan "Grant" Nicholas (born 12 November 1967) is a Welsh musician, and lead singer and guitarist of the rock band Feeder.
Early years
Nicholas was born in Newport, South Wales, but grew up in Pwllmeyric, near Chepstow. He was educa ...
says it is an album he's "very proud of", despite the underwhelming exposure by the media. Some fans have suggested Echo's financial position at the time of release which was caused by the 2007 global recession, had made the album very hard to promote while the delays in release, resulting from the lack of interest from a buyer of the label, have been contributing factors towards holding the album back. Radio 1 wrote off the album from the start, even before being offered "We Are the People" as a radio play first single proper from the album (ignoring "Miss You" which was a free download). The band could not release the album on a different label, unless they paid an amount of money to be released, due to law stating that the band had to honour the six studio albums contract. In an October 2010 interview with Culture Deluxe, Nicholas cited that there were "Deals on the table, but they wouldn't let it go".
" Tracing Lines" was originally planned to be the next single as a standalone package, but due to radio informing the label that the album's title track "Silent Cry" was a track they wanted to play, the single was extended into a double A-side
The A-side and B-side are the two sides of phonograph records and cassettes; these terms have often been printed on the labels of two-sided music recordings. The A-side usually features a recording that its artist, producer, or record company ...
d release and was a download only single. It failed to chart after receiving no airplay on mainstream radio, and it is believed that if a third single was released, it would have been "Itsumo" due to Feederweb, the band's official website releasing a T-shirt based on the song. A fourth single was then planned to be "Sonorous", with the winners of an earlier video-design competition run by the official website being invited to design a video, but even though this was made, the single release never came to happen due to the underwhelming commercial response of the album and the label being downsized to a copyrights exploitation company. The aforementioned competition was to design a video for "Miss You", with the winning entry included on a future DVD single. As Echo no longer exist as a label, it is impossible this will ever happen. The album's commercial performance also seen the head of the album's promotion project, fired by the label. In the aftermath of these events, the band have refused to play any material from the album at live shows, with Grant Nicholas citing that it "Would bring back unpleasant memories". At the band's 2018 tour celebrating 21 years of releasing music, an acoustic version of the title track would be performed during the show's encore, making it the first time in nine years any material from the album would be performed. Many fans acknowledged Grant playing the song after the shows.
Despite the album's underwhelming sales (less than 50,000 units), the band once again played the main stage of the Reading and Leeds festivals
The Reading and Leeds Festivals are a pair of annual music festivals that take place in Reading and Leeds in England. The events take place simultaneously on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the August bank holiday weekend. The Reading Festiv ...
(this time in their highest ever position on the line-up), before taking on their biggest UK tour consisting of 29 different dates. The tour saw the band play at the Brixton Academy after a three year pause, alongside the London Astoria for the last ever time as well as being their last show there as an Echo Label artist. The venue was later torn down the following year. The tour and indeed the campaign for the album ended on December 2, 2008 at the Portsmouth Pyramids Centre.
The following year Feeder released the '' Seven Sleepers EP'', on their Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
ese label Victor
The name Victor or Viktor may refer to:
* Victor (name), including a list of people with the given name, mononym, or surname
Arts and entertainment
Film
* ''Victor'' (1951 film), a French drama film
* ''Victor'' (1993 film), a French shor ...
. It contained two new tracks titled "Seven Sleepers" and "Snowblind", which the band recorded for a self-released tour only EP. As the band were still under contract with Echo at the time, the release did not occur but were instead released as part of the import EP.
Over the next fourteen years, the band’s opinion on its commercial success may have differed. When the band got their tenth U.K. Top 10 album in 2022, the band proclaimed this their landmark achievement. As this album was one of those ten, their opinions on its commercial performance may have changed over the years, looking more towards its highest chart placing instead of its overall performance. In podcasts that have followed in recent years, Nicholas has often cited tracks from the album as the best ones he's written, with "Fires" often getting a mention.
Track listing
Charts
Personnel
;Feeder
*Grant Nicholas
Grantley Jonathan "Grant" Nicholas (born 12 November 1967) is a Welsh musician, and lead singer and guitarist of the rock band Feeder.
Early years
Nicholas was born in Newport, South Wales, but grew up in Pwllmeyric, near Chepstow. He was educa ...
- vocals, guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...
s, keyboards
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
, production
Production may refer to:
Economics and business
* Production (economics)
* Production, the act of manufacturing goods
* Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services)
* Production as a stati ...
, mixing on "Heads Held High" and "Into the Blue", string arrangements on "Silent Cry" and "Who's the Enemy"
*Taka Hirose
Takashi "Taka" Hirose (Japanese: タカ・ヒロセ (広瀬 隆), born 28 July 1967 in Mizuho, Japan) is a Japanese musician and chef who is the current bass guitarist for the rock band Feeder.
Biography
Hirose began playing bass at the age of ...
- bass
Bass or Basses may refer to:
Fish
* Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species
Music
* Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range:
** Bass (instrument), including:
** Acoustic bass gui ...
* Mark Richardson - drums
A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...
;Production
*Matt Sime - production, engineering, mixing on "Heads Held High" and "Into the Blue", string arrangements on "Silent Cry" and "Who's the Enemy"
*Ted Jensen
Ted Jensen (born September 19, 1954) is an American mastering engineer, known for having mastered many recordings, including the Eagles' ''Hotel California'', Green Day's '' American Idiot'' and Norah Jones' ''Come Away with Me''.
Biography
Ted ...
- mastering
*Kevin Metcalfe - sequencing
*Adrian Bushby - mixing
*Helen Atkinson - mixing assistant
*Audrey Riley
Audrey Riley is an English cellist and string arranger, based in the UK.
Career
Riley trained at the Guildhall School of Music with Leonard Stehn. She was a cellist for Virginia Astley from 1983 to 1986 and a one-time auxiliary member of The Fam ...
- string arrangements on "Silent Cry" and "Who's the Enemy"
*Chris Bolster - string engineering on "Silent Cry" and "Who's the Enemy"
*Stephen Marshall - string engineering assistant on "Silent Cry" and "Who's the Enemy"
;Artwork
*Nils Leonard - art direction, illustration and design
*Max Oppenheim - photography
*Perou
perou by frances, right
Ralph John Perou (born May 1970), known professionally as Perou and @mrperou on social media, is a Great British fashion, portrait and music photographer who has also appeared as a judge on '' Make Me a Supermodel UK'' ...
- photography
*Hank Gidney - image manipulation
;Additional personnel
*Sarah Clark - backing vocals on "We Are the People", "Itsumo", and "Fires"
References
External links
Official band website
{{Authority control
2008 albums
Feeder albums
The Echo Label albums