‘Hooked EP’ by Catatonia

This one comes up by mistake, really. A little while back, I re-organised EPs and b-sides into more obvious chunks so that they’d be easier to listen to. Had I not missed this, it would be filed away under ‘Way Beyond Blue’ additional tracks – where I would almost certainly never listen to it ever again. But I didn’t, so here we are.

I picked this up in Wales at around the point that Catatonia were becoming famous. This was an early release – their second, I think. Nothing on this EP re-appeared later down the track, though in fairness, it’s not that bad. The first two tracks are pleasant-enough jangling indie, very much in keeping with the rest of their early work – the band went on to become much more ‘anthemic’, and there are precious few signs of that here. The final track, ‘Difrycheulyd (Snail Ambition)’ is sung in Welsh with spoken French interjections – charming in its own way, but precisely the kind of self indulgent nonsense the band were to ditch once they decided that selling some records might be quite a nice idea.

It’s not a great record by any stretch, but it’s a debut EP, so you can’t be too harsh. You know – for what it is, it’s fine.

‘For Tinkerbell’ by Catatonia

One of those items that’s in my collection more or less by chance. I picked this up in Wales just as Catatonia were on the ascent in the rest of the UK. ‘For Tinkerbell’ was an early EP which I vaguely thought might turn into a collector’s item. It’s probably fair to say that that isn’t now the case.

In and of itself, it’s alright, in a ‘stretching your wings’ kind of way. ‘For Tinkberbell’ itself is a pleasant enough song, ‘New Mercurial Heights’ is a better one (though whether it’s good enough to sustain two versions within five tracks is debateable) and ‘Dimbran’ is also fine. All are a bit similar – a slightly murky backing track layered in jangly guitar, with Cerys Matthew’s voice providing the main point of interest. ‘Sweet Catatonia’ is the low point. The song itself is fine, but this version is slow to the point of tedium, lacking any energy that would make it worthwhile.

Three of these tracks would find their way onto Catatonia’s debut album, all re-recorded and improved, thus rendering this record entirely pointless. I guess you win some, you lose some.

‘Equally Cursed and Blessed’ by Catatonia

Time can be cruel to albums. It can take what seemed to be a great album and reduce it to mediocre, or it can take what seemed a mediocre album and make it seem pretty poor. ‘Equally Cursed and Blessed’ suffers as a result of this. I remember considering it the weakest Catatonia album at the time – it’ll be interesting to see at a later point whether I still think this, or whether their other albums will have suffered as badly.

The album came from an awkward point in the band’s career. Their previous album ‘International Velvet’ had been very successful, and there was no real warning that that would happen. As a result, the band weren’t really ready for it, and it was the next album which paid the price. Its biggest problem, is that it adopted the media construct of the band. The band were talked about because they were Welsh, and because of Cerys Matthews. This album plays up both of these factors to the detriment of everything else. The opener, ‘Dead From The Waist Down’ was one step away from being a very brave first single, but it doesn’t sound like the recording of a band – it just sounds like Matthews singing over a session orchestra. It’s also a bit irritating. ‘Londinium’ is more band-like, but it’s let down by a whinging set of lyrics that seem to cry ‘we don’t like London, because we’re from Wales’. Everyone knew this already. ‘She’s A Millionaire’ is better, but it, and so many other songs, are still let down by the emphasis on Matthews, and in particular, her increasing habit of over-Welshing her accent. Compared to her vocals on ‘Way Beyond Blue’, which combined a Welsh heritage with a genuinely nice singing voice, listening to the vocals on this album is like being bludgeoned to death with leeks. When the rest of the band really do get to demonstrate the fact that they’re still around, the result is tracks like ‘Storm The Palace’, a pointless noisy rant about the monarchy which suffers from such a poor mix, that any actual lyrical message is lost in a sea of reverb.

There are some good bits sprinkled through the album. ‘Karaoke Queen’ is a decent pop song, ‘Nothing Hurts’ is quietly lovely, and ‘Dazed, Beautiful And Bruised’ has just the right level of epic, but it’s not enough to set this album free from the bargain bin of history.