Over fifty years of rock and roll; half a decadent century of breathless excess and worry-about-it-in-the-morning repercussions; a lifetime’s worth of ups and downs, but more downs than ups.* Feeder* know all about the troughs that wait so eagerly about the sides of peaks so fleeting in their attendance – death is quite the end of many a band, yet these relative veterans of all things British and mediocre ploughed on after the passing of their founding sticksman.

One single kept the faithful full of optimism, a song so brilliantly dumb that it acted as a catalyst, propelling Feeder Mark II to where they are today, a Greatest Hits Collection-worthy group as integral to Britain’s contemporary rock scene as tomatoes are to Ragu. That single was, of course, ‘Buck Rogers’, and here Feeder have seen fit to replicate it the best they can.

Stupidly simple structure? Check. Ambiguous lyrics about a whole lot of not very much (but fuck it, cos you can sing ‘em in a stadium)? Check two. Annoyingly nasal vocals that give every aspiring Little Chris in this land and the next hope that they, someday, can emulate their heroes? Check, thrice. So why, then, does ‘Lost And Found’ suck so very terribly? Could it be that we – the music-consuming majority that saw Feeder for exactly what they were all those years ago, during the time of ‘Tangerine’ and ‘High’, a straightforward by-the-book band that got hella lucky – have lost sympathy for them? Have they stood atop this peak for a little longer than nature intended? Yes, and yes, but what’s especially sad about ‘Lost And Found’ is that it still sounds awful when surrounded by today’s similarly compositionally challenged heirs to some throne that’s never actually existed (that was the fucking point): The Kooks, Hard-Fi, et al.

Where’s the fire? Where’s even a spark? There’s nothing to this song, at all: it lacks even the basic blustering energy that made ‘Buck Rogers’ so temporarily appealing.

It’s forever saddening to lose someone dear, someone or something that’s been a part of the way you’ve lived the one life you’re given from a moment cherished until a second of clarity. But even the hardened Feeder fan must realise now, after this debacle of a throwaway single not even worthy of infinite bargain-bin residence, that the band’s time is up. Fifty years plus, not out, and always evolving: it’s rock and roll’s nature to suffer casualties, and ‘Lost And Found’ is the final rusted nail driven slowly into a casket best left buried.