Comfort in Sound

The band returned to live performance after Lee's suicide, playing low-key slots at various festivals in the United Kingdom, before releasing the single "Come Back Around" and then the album. Three further singles—"Just the Way I'm Feeling", "Forget About Tomorrow" and "Find the Colour"—followed the album's release. The album received positive reviews from the music press and was received well by the public, reaching number six on the UK Albums Chart. Although charting one place lower than predecessor Echo Park, Comfort in Sound had a much stronger chart run of 36 weeks on the weekly top 75 album chart, in comparison to the nine weeks of Echo Park. It is also one of the most successful albums of all time to be released in the United Kingdom as an independent album, spending a total of 121 non-consecutive weeks in the Top 50 of the U.K. Independent Albums Chart, with 47 of those also non-consecutive spent in the top 10. The album spent two weeks at No.1 on this listing.


Comfort in Sound is seen as a major commercial success, selling 506,127 units in the United Kingdom and giving the band their second top ten single, "Just the Way I'm Feeling". Inside the inlay, there were also a number of illustrations by Aya Takano, including a picture per song for four of these only, each with a lyrical extract. The first three of these were released as singles from the album, all in their order of appearance in the booklet, which led to beliefs that the fourth song "Comfort in Sound", would be the fourth single, only for "Find the Colour" to be released in its place instead.


In late 2016, Comfort in Sound was played in full on Kerrang! Radio, as part of a classic albums series. Later on in February 2017, the album was inducted into Virgin Radio's "Classic Albums Vault".^[1]

Release[edit]

The album was given a low-key promotional build up due to the death of drummer Jon Lee. Before the album's release, the band played a warm-up show at the Portsmouth Wedgewood rooms prior to performing at the Reading and Leeds festivals and at the Gig on the Green. Kerrang! magazine gave a rating of 5/5 (KKKKK), for the band's performance at Reading. Part of the band's appearance on the main stage at the 2003 Glastonbury Festival was featured on BBC Three and the full set was broadcast on BBC Radio 1 later in the year. The band went on to play an arena tour at the end of the year, with high ticket sales and selling out at the Bournemouth International Centre.


Lead single "Come Back Around" had its first airplay on BBC Radio 1's "The Evening Session" show, and was A-listed by the station. The song was originally recorded as an instrumental demo in 2001, with the lyrics shortly written afterwards. After Lee's suicide, Grant Nicholas re-wrote the lyrics to relate to their friend and colleague's death: when the final version was recorded with Mark Richardson on drums. A completely instrumental version of the album was issued to television and radio media.