Sublime have released ‘Feel Like That’, their first new song in 28 years, featuring vocals from the late Bradley Nowell, the band’s original frontman and co-founder.
The band, now fronted by Nowell’s son Jakob, released ‘Feel Like That’ on streaming platforms today (May 24). The song also features vocal contributions by the singer and Scott Woodruff, frontman of reggae band Stick Figure, who began work on the song before the band got involved.
According to Rolling Stone, the hook of ‘Feel Like That’, sung by the elder Nowell, was taken from a jamming session by the band in 1996 at Pedernales Studio, which is owned by Willie Nelson and located in Austin, Texas.
At the time, the trio – which consisted of Nowell alongside bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh – had broken into an improvised song that would become the refrain on the band’s 2024 song: “Let me tell you why I feel like that”.
The recording was never officially released by the band. Instead, it has been circulated over the years by bootleggers, who have christened the track as ‘Eireen’.
Several years ago, Woodruff had begun assembling the structure of the song on his own, using samples from multi-track tapes of the ‘Eireen’ session. Sublime got involved once it reactivated with the younger Nowell, who recorded his vocals for ‘Feel Like That’ in January.
Three months later, the trio played a set at Coachella 2024, where they performed their 1991 track ‘Romeo’ for the first time in 25 years. “We are blessed that we still have all these old recordings and that we were able to stumble upon an outtake that has been sitting there waiting for all these years,” Wilson tells Rolling Stone.
In February, Gaugh hinted at new music from the band. Per Rolling Stone, he reveals that they’re “ready to explore all options as far as recording goes”, including “remixes” and “new stuff”.
