“The song “FEEL” poses the uncertainty of emotional connection in the form of a bold question driven by guitar music: if you can’t feel the love, can you truly know that it is there?”
The new song “FEEL” by Rosso Tierney deals with a complex issue concerning relationships and does so with a kind of energy that calls for attention. Instead of treating the subject in the style of a gentle ballad, Tierney constructs the track using distorted guitars, strong drums, melodic vocals and a dramatic guitar solo, thus producing a sound which seems immediate and restless. Although there is a clear influence from 90s alternative rock, especially that of The Smashing Pumpkins, the song has a sufficient amount of modern rock energy to come across as its own thing.
The emotional conflict at the centre of “FEEL” is surprisingly simple. Two individuals can care for one another and yet experience the relationship in entirely different ways; one person may think that they are expressing love, while the other wonders if that love can actually be felt. The repeated phrase “Tell me that it’s real / I want to feel” brilliantly conveys that uncertainty. It does not primarily involve doubting whether someone is being honest; rather, it is about the gap between intention and emotional experience. The fact that it is a song means that it has more depth than a simple track about a relationship. Tierney understands that a connection can break down even if no one actually wants it to. The amount of affection, communication or reassurance that one person sees as sufficient may not have the same effect on the other person. Since this is the song’s main question, it can be applied to romantic relationships, to friendships, to family ties and also to the way people who communicate differently understand each other.
The play gives the emotional tension a tangible form. The distorted guitars and the fast drums produce a feeling of urgency, and at the same time the way the vocals are delivered ensures that the song remains linked to its vulnerable aspect. There is a certain effectiveness in putting such an open-ended question into a strong rock setup. Rather than making the uncertainty seem fragile, the music imparts it with momentum. When the guitar solo comes along, the song has already generated a substantial emotional intensity, so that the instrumental part can be seen as a continuation of all that the song has been attempting to express. The fact that Tierney was involved in the recording also contributes to the song’s personal touch. He sings the lead vocal and carries out all the instrumental parts except for the drums, and Sam Graves is in charge of the production at Innersound Audio in York. This direct approach ensures that the performance is closely based on Tierney’s own way of interpreting the song. The final product is not smoothed over to the extent of eliminating its emotional roughness and there remains a feeling of urgency beneath the production. The video takes that atmosphere and expands it into a much bigger visual setting. It shows Tierney at the wheel of a classic 1970s Oldsmobile Delta 88, then switches to a full-band performance with the guitar and Marshall stack placed against the vast runway. The scale of the scene contrasts well with the song’s highly personal theme of one person trying to work out whether a connection between two people is actually being felt. The reason “FEEL” succeeds is that it doesn’t pretend that connection is easy. Instead, it takes the gap between loving someone and making them feel loved and transforms that uncertainty into an energetic alternative-rock song; hidden beneath the guitars, the drums and the solo is a vulnerable question which many listeners will be familiar with—that at times it isn’t enough just to know that something is real, you also need to feel it.
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