Cats on Fire Dealing in Antiques. Cats on Fire are the greatest indiepop band in the world. I know, that is something akin to saying I am the greatest American futboler on the planet. But even the might Cats on Fire can not make Your Woman interesting. Why was this a world conquering hit? Did Jyoti make a mint and spend it on thrift store furniture and gym memberships? I would hope so. It's not got a hook, it isn't particularly catchy, I forget it a mere moment after it ends. I don't understand. Teach me. I didn't mind Hair Like Alain Delon, how thrilling if that had been the hit. But it was not. Song over, goodness. Goodness comes next, Poor Students Dream of Marx, just genius! Really. I could be even less articulate and say just awesome! Really. It's folky, it's sophisticated and smart and perhaps its the image of them that I have in my head of very dapper and composed sorts who seem rather keen on the occupation of pop star. They are the world's tiniest pop stars. They are tall, slender, well dressed, outspoken and the music is perfectly composed. There is this brilliant blend of insecurity and confidence. They have probably never played before more than 100 people. Maybe once or twice, but not three times. They certainly do not make any money. But it's youth and youth is meant for poverty and adventure. The drummer has left. Next track, Never Land Here. Another beautiful pop song. The chorus makes hearts tingle. The drummer has left. I mentioned that a few moments ago. He has another band. Burning Hearts. Everyone else loves them. Why would you leave Cats on Fire then? He does sound like Morrissey. Others will make claim otherwise. English as a second language is no impediment. He's particularly clever. Why then are they not to be disparaged by us as part of the professional clique of European indiepop bands? I don't know. I don't have any hard and fast rules for love, we make them up as we go along. I love many things about this song, the words, the chorus, the 60s garage rock riff. It's wonderful. Will the new drummer ruin them? Doesn't the guitar player play drums in Le Futur Pompiste anyhow? I don't know if anyone loves the last Le Futur Pompiste record. Fourth track, Marr-ied to the jangle, monotonic vocals but it's all in character. Some near virtuosity on the guitar. Were I a teenage girl I might find it worthwhile to follow Cats on Fire around the planet while they toured. Keep a diary, list every song they ever play, follow them to diners and barber shops collect things not ruminated upon, locks of hair, discarded match books. Keep a collage, become a doyenne of the Anorak bulletin board. It will be marvelous, sing like Morrissey as the song ends. Next track, folky, spare, lovely. They aren't cute for cute's sake, they have more depth than that. I may be giving them too much credit. The last record was a disappointment until I listened to it and now I love it. I keep mentioning love. I have all of this love in my heart, it is hidden beneath layers of titanium and peat moss. I can express it to the fates, to pop songs, to the stars above but not to anyone in particular. This is a collection of oddities or rarities or some such. It is as good as their last 2 records. You should buy this album and then buy the other two as well. But do not buy them from Matinee. Buy them from someone else. Next track, dizzy acoustic guitar, his languid vocals, his class, his politeness. When teenaged girls do follow them and they do come to Denver in June they would notice the snowfall on June 20th! It did not snow in the city, no, but the mountains are deluged. The bicycle track was closed due to high water. I rode in my car. It was snowing, no, but it was raining. I haven't any fenders. Fenders seem uncool. I am not normally concerned with my appearance but my bike has a peculiar unattractiveness and fenders might simply interrupt the equilibrium in my head and heart. I love my bicycle. I've never had such a lovely bicycle. I say bicycle always, never "bike". I love Andrew Brough. Do not get misunderstand. This is much better than Bike ever were. Delicate acoustics, mandolin?, piano, his voice, so nice. It's circular. Emmy the Great should attend a Cats on Fire gig. There is something about a band willing to perform. Isn't there? There is. The songs are rather terrific and he could get by by phoning it in, but he does not. This one starts off a bit Twisterella. Always with the "a bit". No more! This site is turning dreadfully mediocre. Is it my recent prolificness? Have I turned into Robert Pollard? Just the way he, Matthias, sings 'I don't know why I keep trying' is wonderful. He's excited about his beautiful songs, I'd be thrilled by them, he wants to inhabit them to make you care about them and when each night after he has sung them to a half empty room to continue sending out signals to the ether hoping for a less desperate response. I don't know where theses songs have came from apart from the ether, I think some of them were the demos that were forever available from their website back when I was still on dial-up and had pseudo-integrity. I was very anti downloading when I was incapable. Now that my neighbours have shared their good fortune I am less principled. This song is My Friend In Comfortable Chair, that may not be the title. It is very Smiths, it is very 1985. Wouldn't it be brilliant were it very 1885? Time machines and steam fairs and blocks of ice stored in hay bales. There is a rush to the words, they make sense, they belong in the places they are placed in. That was a sentence that didn't mean anything at all but I am prone to those. Next track. You Will Find Me Where You Left Me. Slower. Did they not have a drummer then? Female voice. She's no competition. No Soulangeana. i do not have these sophisticated blooms. I am possessor of mere Violas and Peonies and Snapdragons. The Star Lillies from bulbs have poked their heads above the horizon but they are not in bloom, late bloomers, the same as me. And now the drums, epic drums, Morrissey croons, female accompaniment, delightful. Does he mind my comparing him to Morrissey? Morrissey is the archetype, no? It is like a poet being compared to Shelley. It is like a ballplayer being compared to Roberto Clemente. It is like a summer's day being compared to you. Martial drums, lagging vocals, winded things, more female accompaniment. Even when he seems undressed, haggard, undone it still sounds so magnificently effortlessly pop. Do they write a great number of songs or are all of the songs this fantastic. Are drummers important? I listened to Ride on the ride home today and Loz Colbert is important. He is god king of the shoegazing universe. Have you heard Kaleidoscope? Funny because the rest of the are somewhat ordinary. We are all mostly ordinary. This is why we celebrate the extraordinary. Vicariously. I've heard this song before. The original version? Higher Grounds. I was once convinced that this was the superior version but no longer, the album version is much improved. It isn't much changed. None of this "the demo was the bomb" nonsense for us, no. We are men/man of the people. Interesting that this has much more going on as far as the music goes but the performance is not as thrilling as on the more rudimentary tracks. I could be misinterpreting everything. He might be, curse of all things, ironic. I don't think it is possible. Next track. I'd to be compared to Morrissey, except to when it comes to animal rights. He's oddly anti-human. Humans are awful, certainly, but I wouldn't want to live among the baboons even after a night's amarula debauchery. This track is They Produced a Girl, sounds like an early one? Sounds like he was recorded in the broom closet down the hall with a sock puppet over the microphone. He does really sound like Morrissey. No? I keep asking you questions, when will you answer me? The words are not soporific or selfish or insular, it;s effervescent and trilling. I visualize the facial expressions he has made all of the times he has sung this song, they change regularly, he isn't pained or expressive but quirky, effusive, athletic. He's got very nice hair. At the moment my own hair is very long, I am resisting the efforts from work mates to give it a trim, I am having romantic getaways in my locks, dreams of mud flaps gone by. Next track, another I have heard before. i think this was on the first official EP. It was not on the first official LP. Was it? Another louder and more spirited number. Surely he writes these for the boys in the band, for cardio, for the girls in the balcony, for the floorboards underneath. It's physical because it has a treacly garage organ. There isn't anything sinister at all about them but they seem subversive. Their pleasing hygiene, the chiming guitar chords, the handsomeness, it's all very underhanded. Pipas love Cats on Fire. We've already told you how smart Pipas are. It's racing now, the organ, the end. Next track is chiming, very much so, I've called other things chiming but none this much. I hadn't been aware of this one before this record. It's maybe not my favorite track on the album and yet it is still almost marvelous. Who would be their ideal drummer? I am not certain. It will need to be a dapper sort, a swell, a haircut in well tailored jeans. He'll possibly need to play the drums but we've already established that the guitar player plays drums in another band. I could be drummer but I don't have any nice clothes actually. I could write the website and describe the new drummer as Anthony Perkins in Friendly Persuasion. Is that not suave? It is. This is a bit of a lament, dirge-y, it's a b-side too marvelous to be forgotten and placed under the short leg. He's fond of the lyrical dash, we're fond of him. Am I a teenage girl? Possibly. If I would let the world in on my secrets I might have teenage girls telling their middle aged mothers to stop convulsing over me. But I am hidden in the undergrowth, I have the tall poppy syndrome. This song is wonderful. I keep saying that as well but then there are very many songs and not so many adjectives available on an empty head. I hope the water on bicycle trails recedes enough for Ride your Bicycle to Work day. The worst day in the world for we "serious" bicyclists. I ride early enough that I will not be adversely affected but I feel sad for the spandex militia bobbing and weaving and risking their lives with the raging Platte on their right and 364 days a year sedentary joiner on their left. I am not a joiner. This song is Draw in the Reins, it was not on the first album, perhaps it should have been, it's amazing. Oh wait, it was, ha. This version is better. Crooner mode has been activated, female admirer has been discovered, Happiness is Chemistry. Is this a cover? This title seems familiar. i googled, it appears to be an original. It is very nice and original. They seem an anachronism, they seem thoroughly unmodern. Conservative. Brendan O'Neill lamented over the Smiths conservatism. He is mad. They were classical. They were nostalgic. But Johnny Marr is hardly conservative, Morrissey as protagonist is humorous and not a musical conservative. Yes yes, we know they are also the dreaded oh so serious collectivists but we can overlook that in the Smiths as well as in Cats on Fire. Why is it that so many musicians are collectivists? I don't think it is the existence inside of a band that conditions them to such thinking, a band is a gang and a gang feels isolated from the larger world. when Cats on Fire is on stage and being mocked for their fey manners and delicate features and tender pop tunes they are not feeling part of the greater human consciousness. They are reacting against it. always turned towards the wind, breaking through the resistance because to ride with the tide would mean death or mediocrity. This track is different. Is it a different singer? It is a bit more nasal. Mike Joyce? Andy Rourke? Innes Phillips? Last track, too short, really. There are 20 tracks but there needs to be 25, at least. This is the free single. The toss away. The Hague. I will listen to the lyrics because that is a portentous title. A lament for the travails of a war criminal denied his conjugal rights? A story of war criminal tourism? 'The moral of my parents they weren't hollow after all and nowadays I live just a little bit above my friends'. I may have transcribed that last line incorrectly. This is gentle and lovely. Always. Will the world collapse in on them and give rise to cynicism or will their hearts remain pure?