KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * * * *
Let's be honest. The feelers are one of New Zealand's best-selling bands but unless you're already a member of their ardent fanclub, your feelings towards them probably err towards something more cynical than indifference.
Perhaps it's because their image as hell-raisers never seemed to fit with what wasn't particularly hell-raising music. Favourites like Venus and Larger Than Life weren't exactly TV-chucking soundtracks. And their sometimes plodding rock relied more on paunchy hooks than innovative ideas.
But if any album is going to convince you they've left their playground battles behind, this is it. One World is the feelers at their most sombre, wistful and world-weary, despite an album title that sounds as optimistic as a campaign for global peace.
Take opening track Weak and the Wounded. Years of living the high life have added a throaty sageness to James Reid's vocal, allowing him to get away with singing about bold themes of fear, faith, light and dark. He also reveals a real sense of desperation in the title track, (one for the U2 fans).
Production-wise, it's typically polished to the hilt but Hamish Gee's pummelling drums, Matt Thomas' reliable bass and Reid's reverberating guitars are wound at their tightest, the band's weatherly dynamics giving the songs a mystery and depth they've lacked in the past.
On A High and We Raised Hell (note the past tense) suggest the band are tired of their rock'n'roll lifestyle anyway.
If there's any evidence that the feelers formula is still intact, it's on Trying to Get By, Never Get Me Down and the romantic ballad Nothing's More Real, a song that emotionally repressed Kiwi men will use to tell their Mrs they really do mean it when they say they um, love them.
But just when you think you've predicted how the rest will go, Reid turns Nick Cave on us. His voice drops half an octave and he channels that whisky-fed melancholy into the album's stand-out, Last Goodbye: "I've got to get back on that horse to get me home," he sings before a series of scorching expletives.
When he continues the lost cowboy theme by playing around with slide guitar on No One's Listening, it seems his instrument has as much to say as Reid.
By the time the funereal organs are introduced on Warrior - a song with Coldplay's equal parts angst and uplifting melody - it's clear the feelers don't subscribe to the glass half-full theory. And dammit, it suits them.
Even if you've never had much feeling for the feelers, One World could be enough to change your mind.
Verdict: The people's band have troubled souls - and we like it
Label: Warners
