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- Gardening tools, he says with a deep Nashville accent.

Hmm?

- Do you know where I could buy some good, English gardening tools?

It's 11pm in Hyde Park, and a few yards from where The Features are standing, 60 000 people are singing Use Somebody back to the undoubtedly astonished Kings of Leon. The Features' frontman Matthew Pelham however, is more concerned with maintaining his family's green fingers.

- My wife is just crazy about gardening and stuff, so I though it might be cool to bring her some proper tools back.

For just backstage, two blacked-out Mercedes' will in a few moments provide a quick escape for at least half the Followills (we don't blame them; brothers in band and all that), while the remaining two will, along with a small string of A-list celebrities as well as various crew members and hangers-on, grace the dressing room area, where Pelham and the rest of The Features are hanging out with friends and family.

And of course, it's no coincidence that "the best undiscovered band around" (© Caleb Followill) are lounging around Hyde Park this evening. Based in the same city as KOL and signed to their newly established label, the frequent touring partners and indeed good friends, The Features' relationship with one of the world's biggest rock bands has granted them somewhat of a second life on the international arena.

For while The Features had the reviews on their side with their 2004 debut Exhibit A, it wasn't enough to satisfy the profit-minded Universal, who subsequently dropped them, only for the band to regroup and release the follow-up Some Kind Of Salvation themselves in 2008.

However, without major-label backing, and a deliberate no-promo, no-advance-warning approach to the release, the album went by without considerable fuss, and The Features' future seemed - at least with European eyes - uncertain. Salvation then, (or rather Some Kind Of it), came with the Bug label, partly managed by Kings Of Leon, where The Features were the first to be signed, and the album the first to be re-released. In fact, they make such an impression on Caleb Followill that he in an interview with The Independent admitted: "The first time I saw them play, you should have seen me - I was puking round the back; shaking. We can't follow these guys! That's how I feel every time I see them."

A few hours earlier, The Features have just come offstage, and it soon transpires that the band has moved on from the tumultuous times of the past. Their departure from Universal is today merely referred to as 'weird label stuff'. But with a new album soon completed, and their biggest gig to date in the bag, Pelham and drummer Rollum Haas are still notably level-headed.

Pelham: I would say [Hyde Park] went decent. We're not too big on outdoors show, I think intimate rooms are more us. Plus it's weird being the first band on. It's nice though, because you can just sit around the rest of the day stress-free.
Haas: You know, I can't imagine being at the level Kings Of Leon are at...making that kind of money..ever.

So you enjoy being the underdogs?
P: I guess we do, yeah.

Have you always been like that, even in high school?
P: In high school, all we wanted to do was to play basketball or baseball and play music. We didn't really see the point of cruising down the strip, drink beers and whatnot...I guess it's kinda weird thinking about it now.
H: And now, we're not weird enough for the trendy ones, but too weird for the poppy kids...
P: I love our fans, because they're more like us. They don't listen to us because we're cool or whatever. This guy came up to me and said "All I listened to as a teenager was metal, and you're the first band I listened to that didn't sound like that". That's pretty cool, that someone who's just been into death metal can relate to The Features.

Because of your influences perhaps?
P: We draw from every era we're interested in. Everything. From folk to disco...
H: The first things I got into were Duran Duran and Roxy Music!
P: And we don't believe in guilty pleasures. I can say right now that John 'Cougar' Mellencamp is a badass. And I love Can too. Guilty pleasures can be cool again before you know it, you know. Next year The Coog will be here in Hyde Park.

32 hours later and Haas is standing by a franticly blinking G-A-Y sign, intensely staring at a derriere concealed by a pair of hotpants that would make Kylie blush.
- No way is that a transvestite, look at the curve. That's definitely a woman.

From underdogs in Hyde Park to top of the bill at the few-more-legendary Borderline, The Features' true intent is certainly more prosperous in the latter setting, their melodic hybrid of bluegrass, garage, folk and rock somehow resulting in that rarest kind of club crowd - the one where the majority are female. And while the hotpant-wielding girl got her kicks in the gay bar next to The Features chosen venue, the sporadic high-pitched screaming of Features fans must have made some impression on their modest and soft-talking singer, "Really? That many girls? They must've been waiting for Kings..."

For while rumours of one or more of the Followills turning up at their shows are frequent - even to the extent that people buy tickets for hundreds of pounds based on anonymous tip-offs - The Features' London set is free from any guest appearances, not that the crowd seem disappointed; the fans sing every line back at the band, while the front row's (all girls of course) non-stop dancing is a minor attraction in itself.

The mystery remains however, why The Features aren't bigger than they are. Their two full-length albums are packed with tunes that are hummably friendly enough be A-listed on radio stations. Take Still Lost for example, that threatens to morph into Arcade Fire's Wake Up before Pelham's bipolar melody line takes it somewhere else entirely, only for it to end before reaching the two-minute mark. And as for lyrical content: "You turn me on to the idea of growing old" - from one of Exhibit A's standout tracks - surely must be one of the most romantic lines ever put to tape.

Their next album is expected in January, and while the stratosphere of their Nashville peers at the moment seems unobtainable, there's more than a few that would like to see the underdogs climb a few more steps higher towards the stars.

Words and cow photo: Brand Barstein

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1:23 PM | 08/07/2010