Cats on Fire All Blackshirts to Me. I shan't comment on the title. But...I am always puzzled at the pride that collectivists hold in their own brand of enlightenment. Pardon me. I've been reading about the epicureans. Indulge me love for Will Durant for only a few sentences. But why is it that these permissive life philosophies so rarely attract more than a tiny minority? Examine the current crop of fashionable socialists, the committed, the hard core. They exist in the arts, in the academy and in labor. All areas of diminishing importance in every day life. Is this fact tied to economic theorizing? Unlikely. The masses have always been lax, it is now that the elite have turned sloth-like as well. Gore Vidal has died today. First track has been on for a bit, it's lovely. Cats on Fire are the most wonderful indiepop band around today. They have panache, style and a genuine commitment to expressing their politics and I find this admirable. They would love nothing more than to be world conquering pop stars, I suspect, though could they live with the guilt of material advantage that would arrive with such success? Second track, the lead single, My Sense of Pride, it's marvelous. There's this huge chiming lead guitar and of course the impeccable and mannerly lead voice. Lead singer resents comparisons to Morrissey. But be fair, you sound a great deal like Morrissey dear sir. It is in the richness of tone, the confidence in melancholy, the strident obeisance to fashion. This is the second mention of fashion in my entry. They dress smartly. They have an ardent pursuit of elegance and refinement and it is expressed beautifully in their music. But back to the permissive set of life philosophies, if only for an uninformed moment, but there is this pendulum in human history that appears unending. Inevitably the gifts of every generation are concentrated in a mere few and so inequality is a never ending reality, throughout history and neither Savonarola nor Winstanley or Bakunin or Marcuse will be able to halt that wheel. Will Durant himself says you can either have equality or freedom, you can not have both. The pervasive cancer of the French revolution has allowed many to live as if this dictum is untrue, by biology acquired by genetic reassortment mankind has been transformed into a perfectibility. Impossible. Third track was amazing by the way. But lead singer has a marvelous diary and he's inspiringly creative and rightly proud of his brilliant work as a pop singer and pop songwriter and he admirably refrains from Cats on Fire's lack of impact on the world at large. Is it preferable to be fanatically adored by a devoted core of tiny proportions or to be superficially appreciated by the unwashed? I am not sure. I am adored by the tiniest coterie of one, red hair, brilliant laughter and a body whose integument is composed of goodness, kindness and depth of soul with inerrant ability to make everyone in her sphere of influence to feel the saintliness of love. Cats on Fire have devoted fans. A relatively large smattering, large is comparative, surely, but they have more fans than the Receptionists had, surely, and fewer than Embrace. The first half of that statement is axiomatic, I have more fans than the Receptionists, and the second is criminal. Fifth track, After the Fact. Brilliance. It has a new whiff of the slinky. In his diary he admits to a drearily straight laced past, straight edge, ideological purity, a cloistered sense of purpose. Now he's out and about, he's above the crowd, eleven feet tall in pointed ankle highs. He's got an amazing guitar player in tow. The guitar player may have even better hair. They have astounding hair, truly. Google image search should you not believe me, cuffed jeans, smart jumpers and smooth coiffures abound. Next track, softer, but still there is new confidence in his emotional register. He's been a marvelous singer always. Now there is a tenderness that comes from respect for the art, the professionalism of repetition and the reflection of life in a liberal democracy bordering the hegemonic soviet tragedy. The Sea Within You. He's bright. He's charming. He's beautiful. Why is he not a pop colossus? Why isn't Moto Boy either? Nordic and statuesque doesn't seem to have the same cache as it once had. While recording this album they posted photographs of the spartan accommodations that housed the process. Was it lead singer's home? I've forgotten his name? No. It is Mattias. We're friends, yes, but I keep my distance for his comfort. I am in Denver and Mattias is in Finland. I sent him a link to a Giorgio Tuma track once, it was a celebration of Yuri Norstein. Mattias had just posted his own tokens of admiration for the man and I chipped in with a youtube and he thanked me for sharing such beauty. Is that not the honorable life? This should be the credo for this website gone unread, "thank you" because while I rant on and on about politics and the absurdities of collectivities I have a deep desire to impress upon the 8 people, on average, that read most of the posts on here that most everything that inspires me to incoherence deserves your love and adulation. Cats on Fire are artists. This is an inspired monument to cleverness, passion and joy. There is joy even among the tides that lap mainly melancholic. The female voice has joined the lead male voice and it's folk music and I imagine he's authentically rustic and enviably ascetic. I lead a mainly ascetic lifestyle. But love turns ones soul profligate in so many ways, outpourings of emotion and reception of life's possibilities allow a short circuiting of one's previous allegiances to stoicism and monasticism and uprightness. Pah, I am still upright but I am off to Alaska soon and desperate to make regular journeys all over the world to show off my new sense of pride in the art of living. I could label the music of Cats on Fire as a manual on that particular aesthetic, even the shabby attempts at social commentary, because they have an unerring sense of quality control and commitment to each moment they share with the world at large. Second track with the sloganeering group chorus. Idealism. An ode to Leo Jogiches? In my heart it will be a tribute to Leo's hair. Why are not all pop songs concerned with Eastern European socialist hair? It's a bit Housemartins, a trifle McCarthy. It's jolly. Next track, It's Clear Your Former Love. It's marvelous. Even in their spartan amenities they have produced a pristine sound. Here the guitar gathers momentum and his voice louche and reserved and piercing and with a clarity that is so unique in "indiepop" these days. They were a band for a fair amount of time before they were officially released. They did release demos on their websites and the like but you can tell there is an accomplishment in their craft. Here it was clearly what they decided to not include that has influenced the joy in listening. Joy. The word is pervasive in my life. In a world impecunious with this emotion it can trigger guilt. It can turn the brightest day into an evening tinged with dreams haunted by fears of departure, loss and despair as if in this existence the only constant is disappointment and the fact that unfathomable happiness has visited cannot entirely detach the forlorn sense of suspicion. A Few Empty Waves, an anthem, starts off a gentle plucking and flowers into a romantic wash of dreamy ennui. It is so Morrissey. Again why would anyone take offense at being compared to the master? I live most days lamenting the fact that it was my brother that was able to model his hair on Morrissey and not me. I was stuck with Sonic Boom's hair. Little Snack Debbie. I also lament the reality that there has never been anyone ever that has compared me to Morrissey. I was told once that I looked like George Clooney or more frightfully that I resembled the singer from Train. I am fairly certain the singer from Train is 73. Do I look so haggard? But Cats on Fire are youth. They exist in their blissful landscape, sui generis, and I suppose as a grown man it would be deflating to see your identity reduced to a postulate or addendum to another's well worn path of deteriorating successes. Also Morrissey has a very large head. Last track, tinkles and a chorus of melodicas? Accordions? Unknown, but oh so lovely. A symphony of the expression of their previously described youthfulness. The anthem of the lonely punching above their weight and carrying a message to the faithful, apathy is appropriate in the face of the destruction of the utopia you worked so sparingly to create but to which you are absolutely entitled to.