Introduction

FERMENT (1992)
1) Texture; 2) I Want To Touch You; 3) Black Metallic; 4) Indigo Is Blue; 5) She's My Friend; 6) Shallow; 7) Ferment; 8) Tumbledown; 9) Bill And Ben; 10) Salt; 11) Balloon.
Here's an odd coincidence for you: Rob Dickinson, one of the two primary founding members of Catherine Wheel, was the cousin of Bruce Dickinson, lead vocalist of Iron Maiden. See that? Iron maiden? Catherine wheel? What's up with these British bands and medieval torture devices? (Al­legedly, the band did not call itself that because of the torture device itself, but rather because of the spinning firework named after it — yet that does not destroy the coincidence anyway).
Granted, the music of Catherine Wheel will only sound torturous to people with an inborn aver­sion to the wall-of-sound principle. Raised and nurtured on the shoegazing scene, Dickinson and the band's second guitarist Brian Futter seem to have subscribed to the My Bloody Valentine and the Nirvana fanclub at the same time — their sound is a mixture of shoegazing hypnotism and grungey harshness, which, in the wrong hands, could seem like a suicidal recipe for boring alt-rock sludge. Fortunately, on their debut album they also have the good sense to combine these influences with decent pop hooks and a certain spiritual lightness that makes the songs really touching when they're good, and tolerable even when they're boring.
The two biggest singles from here are also the best tracks. ʽI Want To Touch Youʼ, with a Stone Roses / Madchester echo, is a perfect introduction to the band's early sound — a fluently spinning, sparkling lead guitar part floating over the distorted rhythm vamp; clever use of the wah-wah pedal for extra psychedelic effect; Dickinson's «ethereal» vocals and their repetitive hookline that somehow agrees so well with the hazy, multi-layered arrangement... it's as if the singer is truly prevented from the temptation of touching you because there's a magical forcefield between the subject and object of touching. Yes, it's a very derivative song (if you really wanted to offend, you could easily call it a Stone Roses rip-off), but unlike many other derivative songs, this one is totally cool in its atmospheric flow.
Then there's the much longer and more complex ʽBlack Metallicʼ, where we turn from the tactile temptation to surface analysis — apparently, "your skin is black metallic", whatever that might mean (not sure it's a compliment!), and to drive that message home, they make use of slow tempo, gradual build-up, stormy solos, loud-to-quiet-and-back-to-loud dynamics, and whatever it takes, essentially, to share an epic feel. I don't know why it works, really, but it does. The lyrics suggest a reading of the «cruel beauty» variety, and the music reflects a sense of cruelness and beauty at the same time — with an additional tinge of sadness (which, I guess, is precisely the kind of thing that happens when you mix cruelness with beauty) coming from Dickinson's vocals. Apparently, the public felt the same, because the song even managed to chart (on the «Modern Rock» chart only) in the US, despite the long-windedness and the ambient feel.
That's pretty much all that needs to be said about the record's meat-'n'-potato layer: repetitive, helium-fueled vocal hooks over a bedrock of shoegrunging guitar textures (hey, even the very first song here is simply called ʽTextureʼ, and its motto? "I need more texture!.. You need to give me more texture!" Come on, Rob, you're nothing but texture already!). Sometimes they speed up and become a little funkier and more Madchester-ish (ʽShe's My Friendʼ), but there is never really any essential deviation from the formula, and all the songs set the same mood. The good news is, they are willing to really work on the tunes, and additional listens bring out different riffs and also make you really appreciate the lead guitar skills of Futter, who seems to have made Robert Fripp and Robin Guthrie his prime teachers, and although I couldn't say that he has overcome them on any single point, he is still a worthy disciple (and his technique is really excellent even when it is heavily masked by the production — on songs like ʽBill And Benʼ, for instance, he delivers terrific kaleidoscopic fireworks through the wah-wah pedal).
In fact, Ferment'>Ferment works as an excellent introduction into the «atmospheric alt-rock» scene of late Eighties / early Nineties Britain to those who want their shoegazing with a little bit of rocking energy and a little more song-like shape. Arguably, it is the band's best offering (at least, com­pared to the next few records) because after this, they would tip the balance way too much to­wards the metallic angle; here, the balance between harshness and romanticism is close to perfect. Funnily enough, the record that Ferment reminds me of the most, from my somewhat limited experience, is Blur's Leisure — except that on the latter, all atmospheric textures were strictly subjugated to the pop hook, whereas on Ferment it is strictly the opposite. I guess it just goes to show the overall popularity of this type of sound back in its day, but it was a good sound when the song structures and arrangements behind it weren't too lazy, and Ferment, if anything, de­monstrates to you all the hidden dynamics and inventiveness behind the art of sleepy day­dreaming — and yes, it's probably taken best in a hammock during siesta time, but it still gets a thumbs up even if I never had the chance to listen to it under proper conditions.
CHROME (1993)
1) Kill Rhythm; 2) I Confess; 3) Crank; 4) Broken Head; 5) Pain; 6) Strange Fruit; 7) Chrome; 8) The Nude; 9) Ursa Major Space Station; 10) Fripp; 11) Half Life; 12) Show Me Mary.
In most of the ratings I've seen, either Ferment or Chrome emerge as the listener's choice for Catherine Wheel's artistic peak. My own choice is quite clear: Chrome is a letdown to my ears, because what they hear is the beginning of a drift away towards the restrictions of heavy, distor­ted, tormented alt-rock from the relative freedom of psychedelia. I'm not saying this sounds like proto-Nickelback — Dickinson and Futter are not that dismissive of musical creativity — but simply that, for instance, when the loud section of the very first track (ʽKill Rhythmʼ) kicks in, it just sounds like any slow, heavy, loud, draggy section on any record produced by an artistically driven band with amplified guitars. And, if anything, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead would do this kind of thing with more dedication at the beginning of the next decade.
Try as I might, I can neither distinguish too well between these songs nor memorize them; every­where you turn, it is the same wall-of-sound blur that is neither riff-a-licious enough to qualify as perfect hard rock nor atmospheric enough to qualify as effective heavy psychedelia. It hangs somewhere in between these two extremes, satisfying neither of the two fans in me, but still commanding a good dose of respect for the effort. Without a doubt, though, Catherine Wheel are at their best here only when Dickinson clams up, and the two guitarists (including some of their overdubbed clones) begin directing all of their strength to the generation of sweet melodic noise. Any song here hits its peak then and only then when the guitars begin to rip: for instance, ʽI Con­fessʼ sucks me in around 2:31, when a grim metallic riff erupts out of nowhere, and after a few bars a shrill banshee solo is laid across its back... too bad it's only for about thirty seconds.
The formula is betrayed only once, on the aptly called ʽFrippʼ: the song is not so much a tribute to King Crimson as it is a conscious carry-over from Ferment — more quiet, subtle, and atmos­pheric. The guitar melodies are more Gilmour than Fripp, to be honest, but the combination of distortion, echo, and jazzy angularity (especially when the wall of sound production is not there to distract our attention) is admirable anyway, and fully convinces me that these guys could have been masters of complex melodicity, had they not been so held back by this strange adherence to the «shoegrunge» sound — which, frankly speaking, begins to get on my nerves 5-6 minutes into the album... and this one is almost an hour long.
The heavy, noisy sound deprives them of personality even before they'd managed to properly establish it. It does not help, either, that the first single off the album was a self-demeaning me­lancholic brooding called ʽCrankʼ — and don't try to tell me that the similarities with Radiohead's ʽCreepʼ are just a coincidence. The song, relatively short by the standards of this album and focu­sing more on a singalong chorus ("call me crank, my idea...") than on the guitar interplay that justifies Catherine Wheel's existence, is clearly market-oriented, but these guys have serious problems working the market — likewise, the second single, ʽShow Me Maryʼ, actually speeds up the tempo and makes you want to dance, with no memorable guitar parts to speak of but with yet another repetitive chorus, this time building on what looks like a creepy sexual innuendo (it is never explained what exactly Mary is supposed to show, but if I ever learn that Mary is actually supposed to be the Virgin Mary... well, I'd not buy that anyway). Both of these tunes can be pleasing, but if Catherine Wheel built their entire reputation on this kind of material, I'd have to think of them as C-grade, rather than B-grade artists.
Anyway, if it were up to me, I'd have cut out most of the vocals (they are nominally pretty, but take too long to get to the juicy parts), omitted the short singles (they don't do this band any real justice), con­centrated on guitar jamming (most of the tempestuous passages with multiple guitar overdubs are capable of psychedelic magic, particularly in headphones), and slightly toned down the metallic sheen — then Chrome would really come out all black and polished. As it is, I'm not sure that the lasting value of this record will easily allow it to stand out of the mid-Nineties alt-rock muck in decades to come.
HAPPY DAYS (1995)
1) God Inside My Head; 2) Waydown; 3) Little Muscle; 4) Heal; 5) Empty Head; 6) Receive; 7) My Exhibition; 8) Eat My Dust You Insensitive Fuck; 9) Shocking; 10) Love Tips Up; 11) Judy Staring At The Sun; 12) Hole; 13) Fizzy Love; 14) Kill My Soul.
As the first guitar chords of ʽGod Inside My Headʼ appear on the horizon, the horrible thought enters your mind — «Christ! They must have swapped my copy with a bootleg of Metallica outtakes!» Relief will come pretty soon, but the chugging opening is fairly symbolic: it represents Catherine Wheel's ultimate denial of the atmospheric shoegaze ideology and their further advance into the realm of modern heavy rock. Thrash influences are actually quite thin here, compared to the power-chord based grunge / alt-rock legacy, but overall, it is clear that they want to try their hand at «brute force psychedelia» now, rather than simply «distorted guitar psychedelia».
Veteran fans and critics, as far as I can tell in retrospect, despised this decision, but honestly, it was just a fairly logical continuation of the evolution that had already started on Chrome. Per­haps they really were trying to sell out, taking after Bush rather than My Bloody Valentine, but the most important element of the Catherine Wheel sound, the Dickinson/Futter guitar interplay, remains firmly in place, so all they really did was take some focus off the atmosphere and invest it in riffage and power. Admittedly, I cannot insist that it was a correct decision: Dickinson is no heavy metal riffmeister, and I have a hard time trying to remember if there was at least one heavy guitar pattern on this entire record that rocked me to the bone like a Nirvana or an Alice In Chains song can often do. (ʽHoleʼ probably comes closest, but still not close enough).
But let us begin with the singles. ʽJudy Staring At The Sunʼ was the first one, with a title more fit for a Belle & Sebastian record, perhaps, and very little of the band's usual sonic inventiveness — the song puts far more trust in the romantic repetitiveness of its title, where Dickinson is joined by Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses in the quest to raise a little band of angels in support of the world's latest imaginary spiritual martyr ("Judy's day passed out of sight, Judy will be suffering tonight", because it serves you right to suffer, as John Lee Hooker told us earlier). It's not a bad song, except that one or one dozen or one hundred more or less like it was probably written by every British guitar band in the 1990s, and this one, I must admit, does not even make good use of the Dickinson/Futter combo (just the same predictable distortion / jangle pairing throughout, without any attempts to change direction).
The real low point was probably the second single, only released briefly for promotional purposes: ʽLittle Muscleʼ is about... no, it's not about what you probably think (you pervert! I thought about it earlier than you anyway!), it's about, hmm, licking a letter to one's lover with one's tongue, which is sort of the most natural thing to do for a Catherine Wheel song protagonist. The song is short, silly, alternates between quiet and loud passages just like Blur's ʽSong 2ʼ, but without any shades of irony or parody. I suppose that if we really start judging the merits of the album by this kind of song, all criticisms are justified... then again, it was one of the singles. And so was ʽWay­downʼ, which really sounds like a weak attempt to ape the structural and emotional style of Nevermind — loud, quiet, loud, quiet, scream, desperation, noisy guitar break, post-teen angst, but they still can't nail it with as much conviction as Cobain could, maybe perhaps, unlike Kurt, Mr. Dickinson really does not have a gun (fortunately for him, in the long run).
Yet again, this does not mean these loud, short, and totally non-outstanding songs are completely typical of the album. Its centerpiece, for instance, is an eight-minute Talk Talk-ish epic (the least Talk Talk-ish thing about it is its offensive title — ʽEat My Dust You Insensitive Fuckʼ) that's all atmosphere, alternating between soft and subtle guitar/organ textures and squeaky-swampy har­monica breaks with dark side overtones. Another highlight is ʽHealʼ, with a beautifully modulated vocal part from Dickinson: fulfilling the «power ballad» role on this album, it knows when to tone down the grinding distortion and place its faith in the old-fashioned Hammond organ, and the quiet "everyone needs someone" coda has that soulful-melancholic Peter Gabriel / Mark Hollis vibe to it; I wish there were more moments like these on the record, because if you're going to copycat anyway, why not choose the right models?
Besides, it's not as if the album is simple enough to fit into the «if it's long, it's atmospheric and mesmerizing; if it's short, it's stupid and boring» formula. I really like ʽHoleʼ, for instance, which sounds nothing like the real Hole, but is a shapelier alt-rocker than most of the other ones, funkier and with some sneery arrogance in the chorus melody to add to the generic paranoid / pissed-off alt-rock feel. And elsewhere I just wait for the instrumental break, because Futter still dutifully solos like a beast every now and then, saving the band's reputation as best as he can (ʽEmpty Headʼ, for instance). On the whole, you know, I couldn't really bet my head that Happy Days is an objective letdown, in terms of composition, after Chrome — and Catherine Wheel were never about pure atmosphere from the very beginning, either. It does, however, place them in the rather insecure and risky position of diluting their identity, which was never all that outstanding in the first place — and, of course, once we shake the cobwebs away and realize that 1995 was also the year of The Bends, well... there's only so much space in one's head that one should feel free to allocate to music like this, and for 1995, Radiohead occupy most of it anyway.
LIKE CATS AND DOGS (1996)
1) Heal 2; 2) Wish You Were Here; 3) Mouthful Of Air; 4) Car; 5) Girl Stand Still; 6) Saccharine; 7) Backwards Guitar; 8) Tongue Twisted; 9) These Four Walls; 10) High Heels; 11) Harder Than I Am; 12) La La Lala La; 13) Something Strange / Angelo Nero / Spirit Of Radio.
I guess if you are a mildly popular rock band and you feel the need to release an entire album of B-sides, outtakes, and other rarities, one way to go about is to put out one of those Hipgnosis album covers where one guy is supposed to ask the other, "So, just how many cats are there on the photo?", and the other is supposed to answer, "Cats? What cats?". (By the way, the back cover actually has dogs, but if you are a straight male, it is nowhere near as interesting).
Nevertheless, with this bit of a Roxy Music touch out of the way, this is an almost surprisingly strong collection. Since it gathers leftovers from several phases of the band's career, it has the added bonus of diversity — and the band's B-sides were not much weaker than their A-sides anyway. Dressed in the same wall of sound, yes, but the songs do range from drawn-out atmos­pheric panoramas to mid-tempo alt-rockers to concise pop tunes, with a few covers thrown in for good measure: Floyd's ʽWish You Were Hereʼ, done with organ and harmonica over acoustic guitars, is totally respectable (Dickinson's vocals seem a bit overdone to me, but then, they aren't specially overdone for this tribute — it's his natural way of blowing out emotion), and Rush's ʽSpirit Of The Radioʼ is just bizarre, because, unlike Floyd, Rush just does not seem to be the kind of band too likely for such ambience-lovers as C. W. to cover. Indeed, it does not work too well (then again, I'm no huge fan of Rush, so I'm not likely to be a huger fan of Rush covers), but a surprise is a surprise anyway.
It is interesting, actually, that their B-sides in the era of Chrome sounded more like the dreamier stuff from Ferment — relating particularly to ʽCarʼ and ʽGirl Stand Stillʼ, two tracks appended to the short and upbeat single ʽShow Me Maryʼ and illustrating the «static» side of the band for a change; and I do prefer both of them to ʽShow Me Maryʼ. ʽCarʼ creates a soothing-lulling pillow of sound, as the bass takes responsibility for main melody, and a variety of electronically treated regular and slide guitars zoom in and out with micro-melodies of their own — a soft, fragile pattern that goes along very well with the introductory "if I touch you will you break?.." ʽGirl Stand Stillʼ is even better in all of its 8-minute glory, a Talk Talk-ish «pre-post-rock» slowly winding its way up a steep path until all hell breaks loose and then taking extra time to calm down — not as if this weren't a formula that Pink Floyd had already been following two decades earlier, but I just like the execution: there's something faintly mesmerizing about the way all their droning overdubs flow in and out of each other.
The shorter and poppier songs aren't nearly that good, but ʽBackwards Guitarʼ has one of their wildest solo parts ever, and ʽThese Four Wallsʼ is arguably one of their best slow grungy rockers, largely because of the unusual mix of desperation and determination contained in Dickinson's voice as he lashes at the microphone with the chorus — it's as if there's a clenched fist here added to the fuzzy psychedelic mix, and, strange enough, it works: maybe because the band does not generally abuse the «teenage battle scream» principle, on this particular track it comes across as convincing, an odd statement of anthemic determination in a sea of semi-conscious uncertainty. Although the semi-conscious uncertainty can be cool as well — ʽLa La Lala Laʼ, whose title (and especially the way it is chanted throughout) could almost align the band with the likes of Blur, is accompanied with one-liners like "nothing's good, nothing's clear", "don't know what I really fear", and waves of screechy psychedelic guitar to illustrate the confusion.
Despite the record's unhealthy length (70 minutes of Catherine Wheel is quite a chore to sit through in any setting), I give it a thumbs up, because who could resist those pink nighties... uh, I mean, because there's enough high points here to compensate for the monotonousness of the previous two LPs, and also because my idea of what works best for this band may not necessarily be the same as the band's own idea — I like them when they're building up quiet atmospherics out of a half-dozen guitar overdubs, and I like them when they're raging over an instrumental break, and there's plenty of both on Cats And Dogs, whereas both Chrome and Happy Days try too hard to promote them as brilliant songwriters, which they are not.
ADAM AND EVE (1997)
1) Intro; 2) Future Boy; 3) Delicious; 4) Broken Nose; 5) Phantom Of The American Mother; 6) Ma Solituda; 7) Satellite; 8) Thunderbird; 9) Here Comes The Fat Controller; 10) Goodbye; 11) For Dreaming.
Not something I would be consciously looking for. The record does happen to be a fan favorite and all that, but now that they have cut down on the «metallic» part of the sound, they did not do that much to return the «ambient» part of that sound — and what we are left with is a mope-rock album, kind of a proto-Coldplay but with a very strong Pink Floyd influence. The acoustic intro­duction, in fact, sounds like a demo version of ʽMotherʼ, which might not be coincidental, consi­dering that Bob Ezrin was brought into the producer's seat; and at one point they even have a direct lyrical quotation from ʽShine On You Crazy Diamondʼ, which is not irritating at all, but it does result in reminding us one extra time of just how derivative this band is.
The songs are not bad, but they largely get by on the strength of the choruses, and they truly require you to appreciate the charisma of Dickinson — who, in my opinion, just does not have as nearly an achingly beautiful voice as this music is supposed to require. And by shifting the ba­lance over to these vocal hooks, straining with p-p-p-pain and all, Catherine Wheel move from the cosmic plane to a much more personal sphere, where I am not sure that they really belong. Or, at the very least, they have ten times as much competition there than wheverer it was that they used to float around on their first two records.
Besides, one should not forget that the album was released two months after the Big One — in July 1997, we were already living in a post-OK Computer universe, where any new big statement of personal fatigue, disillusionment, and fear of existence in a modern world would have to stand up against the musical innovations and emotional personality of Abingdon School; yet the melodic content that we have here is still way too derivative of the shoegazing drone, only without the shoegazing mesmerism — and just about every song sets the same mood: at the end of each one, you get the urge to come up to Mr. Dickinson, give him a gentle hug and say, "It's alright man. Pull yourself together. It was not me who strangled your cat and abducted your wife. It just happens. You just have to mix with the right people."
Of the three singles (ʽDeliciousʼ, ʽBroken Noseʼ, ʽMa Solitudaʼ), I might try to single out ʽBro­ken Noseʼ for its able alternation of low and high vocals and a specially increased level of personal bitterness that could border on punkish anger, if it weren't so deeply soaked in desperation like everything else. Or perhaps it should have been ʽMa Solitudaʼ, just because the former two are both hard-rockers and this one is more like a moody art-pop song, with cellos and stuff? Forget it. They all give off the same vibe — and it's a nice vibe, but it never gets sharp enough to truly hold my attention. As affected as they were by Pink Floyd, they never ended up learning the main lesson — if you want to infect others with your emotions, you have to give it all you've got. But Rob Dickinson is never as pissed off and determined as Roger Waters, and Brian Futter is never as tightly wound-up and aggressive as Dave Gilmour.
The result is that I have nothing to say about these songs, good or bad. They simply exist. If you like your fifty shades of mope, I guess Adam And Eve could easily be the fifty-first one, but there's too much pop here for me to truly enjoy the atmosphere, and too much atmosphere (and still way too many distorted guitars playing one-chord patterns) to catch myself up on the pop hooks. Respectable, ultimately, but... boring.