Rock and soul and heartache and memory all mix and merge in this new one from Felix Rockey; opposites attract, and emotions that should have been discarded long ago rise to the surface and in less than three minutes, the song gets a lot done.
It opens in gentle, neo-soul territory, where sonic lines are deftly drawn, and soulful guitar licks add colour. The bass line funks out in the depths of the song, but within a minute, the raw rock guitars that were always dancing in the middle distance make their move and transform ‘Old New Feelings’ from a subtle neo-soul slice into a more groovesome rock-and-roll-infused statement.
And as Rockey wrestles with emotions that have lingered far too long after a relationship ended, struggles with what that means for someone trying their hardest to move on, and making space for a new relationship, we realise that while we follow his all-too-relatable conundrum, he has completely reworked the pop landscape behind him, but done so in such a way that we hardly noticed the passage from understatement and subtlety to hard rock heights.
What a great song, what a totally relatable subject and what a fantastic artist, one clearly unburdened by stay-in-your-lane attitudes to sound and style, to genre and sonic tribe.
Just as it should be.
