More than a feeling.

Twelve Stops and Home

* The Feeling * Cherry Tree/Interscope Records

"Danny boy, don't be afraid to shake that ass and misbehave," Dan Gillespie-Sells sings on Twelve Stops and Home. Just don't expect the Feeling's out front man to heed his own advice: Throughout his U.K. band's retro-pop debut, the closest he actually gets to letting loose is when he chirps unconvincingly, "B-b-baby, I think I'm going c-c-crazy!" But if Gillespie-Sells sounds too reserved to ever get rowdy, the Feeling's music is all the better for it. Boasting a treasure trove of feel-good songs guaranteed to stick in listeners' skulls, the lads manage to make their understated, old-fashioned approach to songwriting sound surprisingly fresh. Remarkably, they do it by cribbing notes from the songbooks of such decidedly unhip acts as Supertramp and Squeeze without so much as a tongue planted even remotely in cheek.

That sincerity elevates the Feeling above similarly '70s-influenced peers such as the Scissor Sisters, who seem incapable of nodding to the past without a wink and a nudge. Gillespie-Sells and his band mates, on the other hand, craft electric-piano romps like "Love It When You Call" and swoon-worthy ballads ("Sewn," "Kettle's On") with a refreshing earnestness that makes it hard not to smile and sing along. The songs tend to be deceptively upbeat, however, using sunny choruses and sky-high hooks to deliver ruminations on loneliness and unrequited love. It's a clever trick that provides unexpected depth to music that might have otherwise come off as forgettable AOR fluff. So while its songs may not inspire any ass-shaking or misbehaving, the Feeling has nonetheless pulled off a minor soft-rock miracle with Twelve Stops and Home.