I liked Feeder. I really did. In fact until this past year (when My Vitriol came along and blew everything sky-high) they were my favourite band. Even after that, I still thought Buck Rogers was a great single. This isn't.

It sounds like Crashland. Really, it does. I thought it was Crashland until the chorus fizzled in and I recognised the name of the song. Grant Nicholas' vocals sound harsher and more pebbledashed than usual, positively Troup-esque, and there's a simplicity in there which calls to mind... well, all of Crashland's material. Which is a bit of a shame really, because while they're a cute band, they're not exactly diverse and well-matured icons, and considering the amount of time that Feeder have been around for, you'd think they'd find someone decent to rip off. I'm sure they don't intend to rip off Crashland, no doubt they'd find the notion insulting, but that's what this sounds like.

OK. The Crashland thing aside. Big things are expected of this single, because it follows the recent success of Buck Rogers; this single is to be the one that will cement their footprints in chartland. But will it? The simple fact is, it hasn't the sparkle of Buck Rogers, which for all its dumb lyrics and nursery-rhyme simplicity, was fun, and pushed the right buttons. With Seven Days in the Sun, the lyrics are equally dumb, but there aren't really any redeeming factors. The melody, while inoffensive, drifts as casually out of your head as it did into it. The guitars sit politely in the background. There are no nice touches or throat-grabbing hooks, and the whole affair feels embarrassingly, painfully forced; it's a single that will provide Steven Wells with an array of bowel-related metaphors. There's an air of desperation, and it conjures an image of Granty-boy posed nervously between an award-winner's podium and a hangman's rope, anxiously trying to churn out the tune that'll save his bacon. Seven Days in the Sun doesn't condemn him completely, but it doesn't buy him a lot of time either.