Make it Up feels a long time coming. Feet had mentioned new material when opening for Inhaler in February last year. Maybe they did. Remembering last week is tricky when your brain is fed nothing but chicken pasta and coffee. The sludge and rot have removed a love of experience. But we batter through regardless, hoping for something, anything, to relight the fire. Feet and their second album, Make It Up, get close to kindling love for life again. Fun tracks which land at the right time. Feet are not trying to stretch themselves into new pockets. It prevents the band from becoming what they are not. Remove the fear of a less-than-genuine experience. Better Than Last is a warm opener which sets the scene for this latest release well. Slick guitar work and a flurry of good fun can be found within.
Flashes of good guitar fun bring the best out of Make It Up. Now twenty-four and with rent to pay, Tassimo pod subscriptions to keep on top of and a dwindling side-business chipping away at the hopes of those with more artistic strengths than them, it is sometimes nice to flick back through your mind and find tracks liberated from struggle. This is not to say Feet has not kicked against it. They are a unit of eight years and counting. I’m Wrong and Greasy Boy shed light on their personable experiences. Make It Up has blurred the line between escapism and excruciating reality. We all have the horrors, those jittery moments of panic as we lay awake and coax ourselves out of bed, to shuffle through the day. Make It Up is, in turn, a boom of loving guitar pop. While calling for a simpler time, an earlier time, in its instrumentals, the damnable experiences of the real world provide a pressure which pushes out some fine tracks.
Guitar music of this sort died a death ten years ago and since then has been done poorly by those who fail to move the genre on. Feet has the smarts to lift the essentials of the genre and move it along. There is life in it yet and Make It Up is filled with smart displays of how simpler riffs and sharp writing make all the difference. Why Would I Lie? is the usual crush of back-and-forth troubles but features a warm, optimistic feel in its lyrical components. Look for the flowers in the cracks. It is a feeling found on Truly Awful, a considered and genuine consolidation lacking in other albums of this genre. Most are keen to wrap themselves in the feel-good factors, the bubble wrap which means life can keep beating. Feet does not offer themselves or listeners this luxury and weave their heartbreaking tones through opportune, reflective moments like Truly Awful.
Sit Down gives James a run for his money. Feet demand, unlike the Gold Mother classic. Some moments within Make It Up feel unmoved by eight years of experience. But those are chances for Feet to consider where their sound should head next. No Vision hits out against this. Feet is keen to explore its instrumental range with an almost jangle-like appeal. Nothing of a nostalgic variety filters through. Those who hear it need to pull their ears away from Two Door Cinema Club. Sickos. Had the weather been nicer on this frail-looking weekend the power found in Make It Up would hit all the better. But Feet has an exceptional piece of work on their hands. It may be greedy to ask what is next for the band, but the question remains after a steady selection of work.
