Review Summary: The first dint in an empires armour...
The Cat Empire is one of the workhorse bands in Australian music at the moment. All band members seem to never stop writing, playing music or releasing varying types of albums; be it as The Cat Empire or as a side project. This is shown via an enormity of Cat Empire tinged releases appearing in the past 7 or 8 years, with band members popping up in many different places, playing as a session musician or being part of collaborative effort like Harry Angus’s side project Jackson Jackson. So, all this workload must be huge a benefit for the band, as they find new and more creative styles of playing, right? Unfortunately, in this case it most definitely is not a benefit. The Cat Empire’s 4th LP
Cinema comes across seeming to lack creativity or effort and sounds like that the band have been there and done it before.
Harry Angus recently spoke out, stating that
Cinema was to be a album with the majority of the cuts to be written collaboratively for the first time as a band. Upon hearing this, I was immensely excited, as the musicianship in The Cat Empire is phenomenal, and this definitely showed as tracks such as “Feeling’s Gone” flows easily with fantastic instrumental work from the horn section, while the vocals presented by Harry and Felix are as tight as ever. Harry plays the back up/alternate singer to perfection with his individualistic falsetto approach, while Felix promotes his velvety vocals as always, as they sway in between the chaos of trumpets and heavy guitar and percussion, but as soon as “Feeling’s Gone” arrives it disappears with a playing time of only 2 and half minutes, which makes you feel extremely cheated.
What the album lacks is really the punch that previous albums
So Many Nights or
The Cat Empire had.
Cinema doesn’t have that ‘jazzy’, Latin or funky feel that made The Cat Empire so desirable in the past. Cuts like “Waiting” and “All Hell” sound like they are just an extension of the last albums, as the horn work is uninspiring and Felix’s vocals are bland adding nothing except more irritation to the sound. Thankfully, The Cat Empire has one saving grace-- They know how to write a catchy hook or two – and that is found on one of the last tracks, “Call Me Home”. Whilst starting out quite simple with Felix producing an enticing vocal performance, the horn section’s chorus line is the real calling of the cut, with a very upbeat Latin that would put anyone in a good mood.
Cinema is really a massive disappointment from a band that is heavily enjoyed and respected in their country of origin. The album sounds uninspired and lacklustre. The instrumentation has become boring, and the production is dull and sounds extremely rushed – which is a shame, as
Cinema had the potential for greatness with the collaborative writing yet, instead The Cat Empire have produced their weakest effort as a band to date. Let’s hope this is not a sign of things to come, as the amount of talent in this group of musicians is too great to go to waste.
