At the time of the release of ‘Shatter’ in October 2005, Feeder’s most recent album had been Pushing the Senses. Looking at scores and reviews of the project, it seems that critics just weren’t very impressed with it. I’m sure a lot of Feeder fans dug it though. Though I want to say there was one take on the LP I witnessed that more or less said that the band hadn’t got over the death of their drummer Jon Lee and were just making the same old sad songs like they did on the album that came before. A bit of a morbid way to look at it. Insensitive, to say the least. I couldn’t say, really. I’ve never heard it in full. Though I do remember seeing the video for ‘Feeling a Moment’ on TV the one time, the only Feeder songs I knew as a whole were ‘Buck Rogers’ and ‘Just a Day’. So when the video for ‘Shatter’ started making the rounds on MTV2, I was kinda surprised.

This song was nothing like the two songs I was used to. ‘Shatter’ was darker, brooding, had a harder rock edge to it. Contained a sound that left me feeling that there was something unknown lurking around the corner. I think that specific thing’s more reinforced by the music video it got, which contained clips from a Russian movie called Night Watch. But I knew immediately that the song was one that I wanted to hear constantly, and if ever the video came on the TV, I had to make sure I watched the whole thing. It might even be one of the main reasons I got the band’s Singles compilation for Christmas 2006. The song had been released as a single – a double A-side format with fellow song ‘Tender’ – and I’d completely missed that. So the compilation was the only way to ensure that I could hear the track whenever I wanted and not by the judgement of whoever was managing MTV2 in those days.

In fact, the song had originally been released as the B-Side to ‘Tumble and Fall’, when that came around as the lead single for Pushing the Senses in January of 2005. It also would have been familiar to followers of the Gran Turismo series, as the track appeared in the soundtrack of Gran Turismo 4 albeit with a different mix. Word got ’round among fans regarding how good of a song ‘Shatter’ was, and so, after a successful petition, it was promoted from being a song that maybe no one would have gone on to think twice about to being one of their top, top singles. At least, in my eyes. If only I knew what the song was truly about. Think it’s generally about depression. There’s probably more to it. What I know is, it’s been in my library for almost 20 years now and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. My particular favourite bit is the instrumental break before the final chorus with the frantic chord changes underneath the spooky synth(?) solo. Gets quite intense before exploding into the song’s last moments. I like this one a lot.