For some reason I have yet to fathom, Catatonia remind me of old friends that I really ought to catch up with next time I’m back home. The kind of people I will always keep out of contact with because we are both too lazy, and were never really good enough friends in the first place.
Cerys and the boys certainly produced an album with attitude, which also manages to drift past without offending, leaving a general impression of satisfaction and contentment. This may be that missing link for which I seek. I never found them the greatest company, but they kept me laughing, and I always had time for them when I came across them. Yet this was never quite what Catatonia were about. Says Mark[guitars], “A lot of people were quite surprised when they used to come and see us live after hearing the album, because the album is quite slick and polished, and live we’re slick and polished, but with a layer of grit on top”.
An apt analogy perhaps, but in that case the new album, ‘International Velvet’, which has been put back to the New Year now, must have glass varnished into the surface, since it’s going to be “a lot more extreme than the first album”. And in case the record-buying public were in any doubt, they released the first single ‘I Am The Mob’. Mark describes it as a “a top forty smash”, and it requires Owen [also guitars] to clarify the matter - “It went in at number forty”. Which seems quite low for a band nationally renowned who played all the major festivals this summer, with the unintentional exception of Glastonbury. Owen in particular had quite fancied playing a weekend he had often been at before. “It had been my summer holiday for years, going to Glastonbury, and I always thought, I wouldn’t mind being up on stage instead of kipping in a scummy tent.”
I was starting to understand why I always related them to old acquaintances. It had a deal to do with the fact that they were just like them. They described the single as a song “to put on on a Friday night before you go down the pub, to get you worked up. Not to make you aggressive, just to have a quick leap around the room to before you go out.” And they do seem like blokes you might spend a night with down the local. The focus of the band isn’t just on what they like, but what others will empathise with. “A lot of people will give stuff like ‘we only make music for ourselves and if other people like it, then all very well’, but that’s rubbish,” says Owen, “...if you want to do that you might as well sit in a rehearsal studio. We want to sell lots of records, not just to make lots of money, which would be nice, but so when you write a song you know lots and lots of people are going to hear it”.
Even their attitude towards the format of their records stinks of cronyism, and being helpful to the fans. When Blanco Y Negro, and more importantly Warner, wanted to cut their single releases on vinyl (after deleting the 12” edition of the album after only one week) the band refused point blank. “We still do 7” vinyl because we know a lot of people collect it, and the sleeves look better too because they’re printed on nice paper.”
When it comes down to it, Catatonia remind me of the people they do, because they are in many ways the same. Kind, considerate, and almost never anywhere near wherever I may be. So my simple advice to you is to look up your Catatonia next time they’re anywhere near you, because they were always a good laugh, and they’ve got a rather good selection of tunes on the go right now.
Catatonia were talking to Guy H, in November 1997.