The Cat Empire - The Cat Empire

A few months after returning from Australia, I was pleased to find a copy of The Cat Empire's debut album on cd in the excellent Resident Records in Brighton. I'd got into the band when I was living in Canberra (or, more specifically, somewhere between Darwin and Adelaide on an epic road trip) and picked up a second hand copy of Two Shoes in my local second hand cd shop a few months later. Their albums were easily found over there, and they'd just released Cities (a Cat Empire "project"; I still don't have a copy so don't really know what they meant by that) so it was easy pickings. As is often the way, this resulting in me not buying their other albums whilst abroad and finding them much harder to come by in the UK. (I was also running low on funds and had, perhaps foolishly, planned to go to Roskilde Festival immediately after returning to the UK, meaning my student loan had to stretch even further.)

I was pleased to find a copy that day in Brighton, but knew these songs well from being in Australia. As debuts go, they don't mess around in introducing everyone to the already well-established Cat Empire sound - How To Explain is a quintessential Cat Empire song and lets the listener know exactly what to expect from the next hour. Days Like These could have equally started the album for the same rasons. Track four on an album was always the traditional spot for the biggest single, and The Chariot fits that role perfectly - a song about how great music and friends are, and the most triumphant trumpet solo - it's got song-for-a-mixtape written all over it. Hello and One Four Five are both instant crowd pleasers, although in subtly different ways and The Rhythm rounds of side B with some more excellent trumpet and piano. The Wine Song, however, is the unlikely highlight - there's almost something circus-esque to it, and the way it builds up is kinda cheesy, but brilliantly fun at the same time; I challenge you to not take some enjoyment from it. I think they've played it live every time I've seen them and it's always the one that gets everybody moving. Even though it's the slowest song on the album (perhaps because of it), I've always had a real soft-spot for The Crowd - the extra vocals in the chorus are perfect and the chorus eventually explodes in an almost post-rock way. Finally, the horns at the very end of All That Talking are brilliantly filthy sounding. 

I bought this vinyl reissue the same time as I bought Two Shoes in Truck in Oxford. I've seen the band play in Oxford twice, which is more than pretty much any other band (bands rarely come to Oxford it seems, and less so twice!), so I guess someone in the record shop has a particular fondness for them. I just noticed that it was nearly exactly ten years after buying the cd that I bought this LP, which I would have timed better had I known in advance (and could have relied on the records not being bought by someone else in the intervening two weeks).

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, picture sleeves
Tracks: 13
Cost: £21 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 07/11/16
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no