”I come alive in the screaming city baby”


There aren’t that many bands that I feel passionate about who inspire little in the way of fierce emotion amongst music fans. But Catatonia – sweet, sweet, scyzophrenic Catatonia, by turns disconsolate and joyous, forever scaling great heights and simultaneously perpetually underachieving – they were such a band, and remain one. There are a lot of people who don’t care about Catatonia one way or another – never have, never will. Weren’t they just another female fronted Britpop band, who released a couple of annoyingly hummable singles with jangly guitars and big dumb choruses? They didn’t even make enough of an impact in the hip muso collective unconscious to inspire any venom, except in the heart of the most biter and sexless anti-populists. I say Catatonia, the world of modern indie rock as one says “eh”. Well, fuck you all. Catatonia were wonderful, Cerys is my rock’n’roll deity future wife, and ‘Do You Believe In Me?’ is still one of my five most reassuringly traumatic songs of all time.


I bring this up because there are currently ads in the UK press for a forthcoming album, apparently entitled Greatest Catatonia Hits if you trust typography, and it’s an incredibly depressing thing. Not because the album isn’t going to be any good – on the contrary, about two thirds of it is bloody brilliant, and if you’re the sort of person who buys ‘best of’ albums, you could do far worse. But leaving aside the fact that is far, far too early for a Catatonia ‘best of’ album (the cakes from the funeral are barely cold, Horatio, or something), there’s something very depressing and wrong about this particular album arriving right now.


To start with, it’s not a ‘best of’ album – it’s a ‘greatest hits’ album, and the two are always very different things indeed. In the case of Catatonia, what is especially highlighted is that early in their career, their best songs really were those shimmering, irresistibly singles. ‘You’ve Got A Lot To Answer For’, ‘Bleed’, ‘Mulder and Scully’, ‘Road Rage’ – all future jukebox classics, smart sassy guitar pop of the highest order with the odd ultra-modern quirk thrown in for good measure (although oddly, their best and most anthemic single remains one that bombed, ‘I Am The Mob’). But as they got older, the catchy pop singles started to become more and more annoying ('Kareoke Queen', anyone?), whilst the tragic and beautiful wine-soaked laments remained, well, tragically neglected. You won't find 'Shoot The Messenger', 'Goldfish and Paracetamol', 'Valerian' or 'Dazed, Beautiful and Bruised' on the 'greatest hits' collection - but it would be a much better record if you did.


Two of the tracks on the album aren’t even by Catatonia, but instead are guest vocal appearances by Cerys that mark out the difference between her and the rest of the band in several key ways. For Cerys, even if we allow for her judgment being impaired by an admirable fondness for hedonism in all its forms, had terrible, terrible taste in her choice of collaborations – if she really thought her band were doing the same kind of thing as fucking Space, then that explains some of dodgy singles and even dodgier videos that surfaced with the album Equally Cursed and Blessed.


But the fact that Cerys was invited to appear on other people's records is a relection of the fact that for a brief period she was an indie icon, a London 'it'-girl, a proper pop star. The rest of the band were four blokes whose attractiveness, personalities and charisma ranged from startlingly average to non-existent. And this was what did for the band's career, arguably, although we won't know for sure until the bitchy books are written. The cover of the new compilation shows Cerys leaning disconsolately against a wall, whilst the rest of the band lurk disconsolately (and anonymously) in the shadows. “We hate each other and we’ve fucked our career” seems to be the implicit message, an honesty that’s refreshing yet possibly inadvisable if they want this record to be bought by more than the three people who parted with good money for Paper, Scissors, Stone.



Alas, sweet Catatonia. I knew you.

The Only Unliving Boy In Peckham


“As far as I’m aware, I’m the only vampire in Peckham…”


Last night I watched a documentary on Channel 4, part of their 'Teenage Kicks' series, about teens who are into the occult in some way or other. The highlight of a pretty solidly entertaining hour of television was without doubt Justin, job-seeking vampire of Peckham. Justin skulks around in parks after dark like he's looking to put James Marsters out of work, but comes across as an entirely different person when not ‘vamped up’. We see a man who looked like Chris Moyles fitting Justin for fangs in the corner of a shitty pub, and the sounds of Nick Drake play. When he gets his first pay-cheque, the first thing Justin will do is take his mum out for a slap-up dinner – fangs and an empire will come later.


Justin has a 15 year-old mixed-race girl called Mandela as sidekick and trainee vampire – or as he puts it rather worryingly, ‘child’. Needless to say, Mandela looks like she could kick Justin’s arse from New Cross to New Hampshire. Mandela’s mum says “It’s a phase she’s going through”, while Mandela skulks behind her in the kitchen and shakes her head defiantly. Mandela’s dad is a good deal scarier, and gives you the impression that should the need arise, he’d be quite handy with a stake. I love Justin. I want to give him a hug. As long as he doesn’t bite.


The Woking Coven are witches. One of them looks weirdly like a younger Claire from Six Feet Under (BILLY!). They’re probably too young to be cutting their fingers and drinking small amounts of each others blood, but fortunately the more reserved members of the group, plus their general inability to agree on anything, means that they settle for drinking each other’s spit. Apart from Anne, the one who chickens out, later precipitating a crisis through her confession of this act and her religious pluralism (she doesn’t want to be classified as just a witch).


Watching Buffy makes these girls proud to be witches, but so does watching Practical Magic. Something tells me that these girls will grow up to be the kind of effortlessly sassy female geeks who lure hapless men like Dan onto the rocks.


There are some older witches featured in the show, but still young enough to make me feel like a washed-up old git. Elena wants a £700-plus coat, and writes a money spell to bring her ‘readies’. Another member of the Coven, nascent anarcho policitics clearly kicking in, takes her to task. The future is in good hands.

Ever get the feeling you were born without certain key life skills that 99% of people you know possess? Like, say, the first clue as to how to get a job, organise your finances, and generallly interact with adult life?

Ack.

"I won't let them crucify you!"



Is it me, or is Spartacus the most gay, communist movie ever made? Normally I’m not one to bemoan the decline of Western popular culture, but it does strike me as rather tragic that Hollywood’s idea of a blockbuster movie is no longer three and a bit hours of armed mass revolt, political argument, and a blatant love triangle between Laurence Olivier, Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas…