Related show
My group, aptly named the Catbirds (I am, after all, Catbirdman), has a new album coming out very soon. It should be available on my band site within the next few weeks, and physical copies will be in my hands in the next few days. This album, Subanimal Sounds, is the cumulative result of 20 years of backlogs, logjams, listlessness, and unfinished lists. One item on the list has now been checked off, thank God.
The above artwork, fashioned in a dark and woolly place by the great Kurt Lightner, fits the songs perfectly. My music draws from blurry impressions of sources, from half-remembered 70s TV soundtracks and devoured mice left on the doormat, to Beach Boys in the background of the sub shop that my Dad took me to on Saturday mornings, to the haze of self-awakening and the obscure forms that accompanied 90s shoegaze, to the singalongs for one that whirl through my head as an adult, singing to my cat like a fool.
Ah yes, the cat. I have driven away more than one woman when the revelation was made: I write songs about my cat. More accurately, my cat shows up in songs that are more deeply focused on other things: mainly the good old human condition. Why animals speak, how animals speak, if they speak at all, and what it might signify. The animal will. The decomposing guts and bones of a fresh kill. I do not apologize about writing songs about my cat. Her name is Addie, by the way.
If you’re looking for RIYL types of comparisons, well, the easiest frame of reference is Belle And Sebastian. I don’t usually explore the soft pink underbelly of soft rock as purely as they have, but I have been known to adopt the type of “hard melody” usually credited to the Beatles and onwards, appropriating it into a more wistful and stark setting There’s a similar humor in my songs, and this, too, has driven away many women in my life. I do not apologize for my humor. Here’s a song that in my mind illustrates the Belle And Sebastian connection:
The Beach Boys are the other easy reference point, and the modular wackiness of When you had babies is an example of that; it was in my mind coming from the Smiley Smile fantasy world of little pads and gentle jungles:
The Catbirds: When you had babies
My songs get dark. I often visit not just the cat, but the prey. I try to find out what happened to the prey, where it went. Every now and then I find myself in the loneliest place imaginable. I’ve written about that, and it is on this album. Sometimes it’s raw (“Wild Cat of Borneo”), sometimes it’s calloused (“Eyes in the dark”), and sometimes it’s a sadness bordering on elation (“The Eternal Meow”). Sometimes it’s naff (the various “chants” and interludes on the album), but don’t tell me that to my face.
The Catbirds will be playing a show to promote this CD, Thursday, March 4 at the Hideout in Chicago. We’re honored to support Baby Teeth and their fabulous brand of spastic stomp and bad-ass kitsch. The Catbirds feature members of the Chicago group Detholz!, and while we can’t promise the same amount of glorious spectacle (I can only dream…), we do hope that at least some of you will respond by throwing underwear onto the stage. It’s a natural response, after all, to psycho-cerebral musings on the existence of the Soul and the various levels of animal life, as told through cute little songs I sing to my kitty cat.
So please, come one, come all to the Hideout on March 4. There will be Baby Teeth merch for sale, and there will be Subanimal Sounds. If you like the samples in this post, we hope you will come out for the live offering and/or check the Catbirds’ website for streaming music, an EP for sale, and the album, which will be available there by mid-March. And even if you can’t stomach songs about a cat, well, just come around to see the Detholz! lads and to get blown away by Baby Teeth. See you then!
Catbirds band site: http://catbirdman.com/
Hideout main site: http://www.hideoutchicago.com/
Baby Teeth band site: http://www.lujorecords.com/artist.php?artistid=39
Baby Teeth MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/babyteethmusic
Detholz! band site: http://www.detholz.com/
Detholz! blog: http://detholz.wordpress.com/
Detholz! MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/thedetholz
Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=289529616916&ref=mf
