So here’s the final, final time a Feeder song will be in this series. They’ve been around since the first calendar year the blog existed, a time when I was doing a post a day, publishing one once I’d finished it without any effort to proofread. How those times have changed. Growing up in the 2000s, you were bound to see a music video by Feeder somewhere on those dedicated channels. Kerrang!, MTV2, VH2… The list could go on. And the songs those videos were made for tended to be really good. I’ve come to see Feeder as something like the Welsh Foo Fighters. You don’t have to be a huge fan of either group, but you’ll hear ‘Just a Day’ or ‘The Pretender’ out in the wild and immediately think, “Oh, I know that song.” Both have made considered-to-be-classics among their respected fanbases. In Feeder’s case, it’s probably Comfort in Sound. Then there’s The Colour and the Shape. Both bands have had their tragedies when it comes to their drummers. And generally, for me, the singles across the two’s discographies are usually the best songs they’ve done. It’s all a little too similar.

‘Tumble and Fall’ was a single. It was released as the first one from Feeder’s fifth album, Pushing the Senses, two weeks before the album’s arrival in January 2005. That whole era of the band was one I missed completely. During that time, I would have been at my peak of Green Day worship, watching Homestar Runner and Weebl and Bob on the side. When Feeder’s The Singles compilation came out in May 2006 and I got it the Christmas that year, ‘Tumble and Fall’, being the single it was, was on there. But I was looking forward more to hearing ‘Buck Rogers’ and ‘Burn the Bridges’ whenever I wanted to. Oh, and ‘Shatter’. All great songs. It was years later that I saw the video for ‘Tumble and Fall’, again on one of those music television channels. Songwriter and guitarist Grant Nicholas once said the tune is a love song and the ups and downs of life, life in general and how you deal with it. I feel like it’s a love song, though not in the regular way you’d probably think.

You see, Nicholas’s close friend and original drummer of the band Jon Lee passed away in January 2002. The loss was the impetus for the creation of the album Comfort in Sound, which was released later that year. I think ‘Tumble and Fall’ sees Nicholas still trying to come to terms with the fact Lee was gone, even in 2004, presumably when the song was written and recorded. “Life’s not the same since that day you went way / I recall, like the drops of summer rain that fell on me / Come back to me.” That whole bridge, really sad. Understandably, Nicholas wishes Lee was still around. And then there are the clear allusions to suicide in the music video, which only reinforced my interpretation of the song. All in all, I think the feeling of the song is summed up in those resigned, “Yeah, yeah, yeahs” that occur throughout the song. Sometimes that’s all it comes down to if you’d have to describe how life’s going, just brush it off, “yeah, yeah, yeah.” ‘Tumble and Fall’ is a slow burner, but it’s got a lot of weight to it. Really makes you feel. I was on a train home from somewhere, 2019 time, was staring out the window while the rain was pouring with this song playing in my ears… It really hit me there, I gotta say.