Afterglow34's Full Review: Equally Cursed & Blessed by Catatonia
As a promotional tool for this momentous event, I envision a UK fight night that features Cerys Matthews and Shirley Manson as the main event, and just for jollys sake, the Gallagher brothers on the undercard duking it out over each other’s wife/significant other. If anyone knows a decent British promoter, I think this would go over big on pay per view… as long as we don’t have Marlon Brando come out on stage to sit in a rocking chair and talk about kids with cancer.
Parallels between Welsh popsters Catatonia and the more-publicized vehicle for an X-chromosomed lead singer, Garbage, are difficult to ignore… until you realize that Catatonia hails from an area steeped in cultural tradition and heritage, and that Garbage is based in the bustling metropolis of drunken philosophy majors and point shaving, Madison, Wisconsin (My apologies to the majority of UW students that aren’t drunken philosophy majors or athletes). Trust me, it’s not even that much fun. Under normal circumstances, any rational opinion would indicate that ample record sales and popularity would fall into the hands of the former outfit, but as reality and universally inept record execs would have it, ‘tis not to be. Garbage recently released their third album to mixed critical opinions (hint hint: Thank you Dusty!!!) and moderately brisk sales, while Catatonia’s musically rich American debut, 2000’s Equally Cursed and Blessed, went wholly ignored by a purchasing public that listens far too much to what Mr F.M. Radio Programming Guy has for him (or in this case, her).
In the mid-to-late 1990’s a slew of Welsh pop/rock bands emerged, led by the likes of 60 Ft. Dolls, Catatonia, Super Furry Animals (who house a former Catatonia defector) and Stereophonics, who were recently the target of a royal torch by Divine_Cheese in his 2001 year-end wrapup. As the American music scene stands right now, we’d be glad to take Stereophonics off your hands to take the place of our own mediocre bands if you’d like to get rid of them. We need to get those negotiations going, I can’t imagine they’d take very long… Cardiff’s Catatonia charged from the pack, forging a unique pop sound that surrounded the vocal histrionics of the ravishing Cerys Matthews, who handles both the lead and backup vocals on Equally Blessed and Cursed, and does aptly so.
Catatonia, initially comprised of Matthews, guitarist Mark Roberts, bassist Paul Jones, drummer Dafydd Ieuan and keyboardist C. Pegg, independently released respective EP’s in 1993 and 1994, “For Tinkerbell” and “Hooked,” after which Ieuan and Pegg exited the band, the former stepping over to a rival band, Super Furry Animals. (Those EP’s were formally released together as a package in 1999.) They replaced Ieuan with Aled Richards, and employed a second guitarist, Owen Powell, to replace the departed Pegg. Their first full-length album, Way Beyond Blue, didn’t come until 1996, but with it came their first charting single, “You’ve Got A Lot To Answer For.” Though it experienced critical success, the band’s first commercially successful album didn’t come until 1998, with International Velvet, the album that stood many critics and music fans on their ear, which I imagine would be both very painful and make it very difficult to hear the music. And also, as a result of the discovery that it was possible for good things to come from England’s western shore, many English citizens upgraded Wales from the “Little Sisters of the Poor” to the “Little Sisters of the Lowly Blue-Collar Workers.” New British Prime Minister Blair was reportedly unaware of such a development, and therefore would not speculate on the issue.
Catatonia’s ubiquitous musical twin band, Garbage, have a penchant for grabbing the ear of the listener (in which Shirley actually grabs you by the ear and drags you over to the speaker) with catchy overdubs and solid hooks. Credit for this belongs largely to the adept producing talents of Butch Vig, who has set his knobs to the sounds of everyone from Nirvana to Freedy Johnston. Vig is a producer of polished material, knowing what he has as the talent and laying down the various pieces around them. Songwriting credits usually go to the entire band, but it is Vig that makes the band go. Catatonia’s brand of pop, however, is a different beast altogether. Their philosophy backs off of the synth beats and plentiful overdubs in favor of a straightforward, largely guitar-based melody line. It does emphasize the estrogen-drenched vocals of its’ own frontwoman, like Vig does in Garbage with the sultry Shirley Manson, but Matthews’ sometimes squeaky soprano is better served by a simpler method of music-making.
Equally Blessed and Cursed’s opening track, Dead From The Waist Down, boasts a decidedly lounge-esque feel and a 1960’s American vibe, confirmed by the refrain ”make hey, not war,” a backing string section, and a definitive reference to the state of California. I’ve listened to a number of British-based albums lately that are saturated with American nostalgia and mystique (the Stereophonics J.E.E.P. being such a recent example), a trend that I’ve been unable to explain considering the omnipresent, 200 year-old resentment between the two lands, and the fact that everyday Joe Q. American couldn’t care less, under normal circumstances, about what goes on beyond American soil, let alone the country that angered our ancestors enough to run off and start our own. Oh well. If life was about logic, America wouldn’t exist.
The song that follows is one of the choice cuts on the album, a pleasantly bitter piece of guitar pop called Londinium. The song reminds me much thematically of that of David Gray’s “Babylon,” though to compare it to “Babylon” wouldn’t do David Gray much justice whatsoever. And he’s already experienced his share of injustice, so we’ll spare him my measly opinion. They both have an underlying sense of resentment towards the big city, as if they associate much of the pain they have experienced with the tedious, repetitive nature of life there. Out from under ringing guitar, Cerys’ refrain completes the stinging indictment:
London never sleeps,
It just sucks…
The life out of me
Two consecutive acoustically balanced pop numbers, Post Script and She’s A Millionaire, saunter leisurely through their choruses and stripped-down melodies, with Cerys co-writing the former track, as she does on five others as well. It has a distinctly personal aftertaste to it, with what comes across as a theme of parental abandonment or neglect. Storm The Palace is a noisy, revved-up punkish rant against the (over accentuated?) tourism industry, largely unintelligible without the handy lyrics sheet. That also helps me, the laddish American, with that Welsh accent.
The sardonic and undeniably catchy Karaoke Queen shifts from the tone of its’ predecessor, a tongue-in-cheek slice of dance pop that scorches the inanity of the radio-friendly single, being a radio-friendly piece itself except for the fact that most stations don’t play five minute songs that have a brain with it. How delusional does one have to be to willingly program cryptic, three-minute pop songs? It boggles the mind…
Bulimic Beats, a Cerys-penned song, throws the album in reverse once again, a pitch black, slightly quirky harp-vocal duet that nearly drags the album to a screeching halt after the giddiness that defined Karaoke Queen. She vocalizes about the shortcomings of the opposite sex, a target that seems almost too easy at first, but highly incongruous once you realize how many love songs have been written about women from men. The song that follows, Valerian, sounds like Cerys taking a step back, apologizing for wronging someone and making a harsh judgment, as she was in Bulimic Beats. THIS JUST IN: Women can be indecisive, and men can be shallow. Now back to your regularly scheduled piece of wannabe journalism…
Shoot The Messenger breaks out the piano for its’ first prominent appearance on the album, continuing the near-sequential evolution of a relationship as the previous songs had dictated, this time Cerys and co-author Jones turning to a vehicle of self-resentment for their own aches and pains. Time to do away with the middle man… Nothing Hurts brings the lounge act back, replete with drifting strings and a meandering guitar line; this time the theme turns to self-denial as a vehicle of coping. Dazed, Beautiful, and Bruised completes the circle, bringing the protagonist’s state of mind back to a temperate, tolerant position, less judgmental and far more stable.
The final two songs break the effective coherence of the album, but they also happen to be two of the toe-tappingest (or, if you prefer, air-guitaringest) songs on the record. They were previous Catatonia hits that were added just for the American release of the album, not that anyone really noticed or even cared, but I certainly appreciate the addition. The upbeat rockers Road Rage and Mulder and Scully would be welcomed with open arms on American pop radio if anyone took two seconds to listen, but everyone knows that the average American attention span comes up woefully short of two seconds. Listener’s aptitude aside, one thing is positively sure: Chicks CAN rock. Have no doubt about it.
OVERALL GRADE: B
Luke’s Meteorological Music Mood Meter for Equally Cursed and Blessed: I’m only happy when it’s overcast.
In the course of one day, I’ve fallen in love with a woman that I know nothing about. I suppose I’m not the first man to ever do that, but I’ve definitely got a warm, fuzzy feeling because of it. For further commendations of shining (and some not-so-shining) female examples, I would kindly suggest you move on to the rest of the all-star lineup in this honorary Write-Off:
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