My man in Oz hooked me on The Cat Empire some two years ago and since then I have been strung out on their infectious blend of Ska, Soul, Salsa, Funk and Hip Hop. This third album sees the bands sound thicken with maturity, the arrangements and vocals are tighter and more polished. The genre shifting compositions here sound less stitched together as they did on earlier albums. The band is changing tempo and key signatures just as wantonly as before only this time the shift are fluid, easily carrying the listener from section to section and it is those shifts that gives The Cat Empire their signature sound.
The band states that Cities is an album dedicated to their home city of Melbourne as well as a tribute to the sites and sounds they have experienced abroad. They explain that the process of writing and recording was hasty and in many ways the release a bit of a surprise. However, the album is full of life and brimming with energy. The abundance of Soul charts on Cities is a slight change to their prior work and it sounds as if the band had spent a better part of last year pouring over the work of James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, and even Tom Jones. “Side to Side” is a fairly traditional arrangement making use of a huge horn section that swings, sways, and punches their lines with impunity.
“Waltz” happens to be one of my favorite songs on the album as it is a drunken beer hall number that stomps and swaggers only to burst out in to a frantic and slippery piece that moves about Mariachi, Salsa, Polka, Afro Beat, all built on a heavily Soul bridge. It is a fine example of the band’s knack for appropriating the most unlikely of sounds and tossing them all together to create a thick stew of music. In a scant four plus minutes they have managed to through a party on every continent and by the end I’m thirsting for more. However, their are moments on the album where the band pulls back a little and takes a more leisurely pace. “Song for Elias” features a male/female duet that is built a round a fairly nimble piano line and a dry sweetened horn melody.
Now here’s the rub. Cities is damn tough to get outside of Australia and they are only pressing 10,000 copies. That said you can try Amazon or from Cat Empire’s own online store or just tuck yourself in with some free tracks to whet your appetite. Very highly recommended.
I was listening to college radio the other morning on my way to work, which is something I usually don’t do. Like most people I have to ease my way into the day and usually prefer listening to people talk on NPR while the morning fog lifts from my brain. But the car radio was already switched to that station and a cool unknown song was on so I stuck with it. The next one, also new to me, was a winner too so I happily cruised along with it. And then it hit: one of the most jarring, jaw droppingest songs I’ve heard in a long time grabbed me by the feet and smashed my head against the punk rock. Even at a moderate volume it sounded like my car speakers were shredding and the windows shook from the impossibly low bass without benefit of a subwoofer. “I was born in a witch’s cauldron,” was the only line I could pick out from the distorted, buried-in-the-mix vocals. As if it didn’t already have my attention, the song suddenly launched into an incredibly violent galloping thrash that nearly caused me to drive off the road. Who the hell was this?!?
Children of the CPU are definitely hardcore DIY what with sole responsibility for the recording, producing, and distribution of 
Quick, name a musical artist from South Dakota! Uh-huh. I couldn’t either, at least not until I started checking into The Weather Machines. This Rapid City four piece plays catchy Ted Leo-esque power-pop songs with friendly power chords, fat bass lines, and understated drums. Jason Ward’s voice especially reminds me of ol’ Ted, but overall they’re a more straightforward rock band. Highlights include the chiding “Northern Lights” (”Stop showing your scars / because it’s never been clear who got the worst of what you say”), the stutter stop of “The Latest In Company Brides,” and the riffed out “32,000′ Above Suck City.” Clocking in at just over a half hour, the dozen solid songs of The Sounds of Pseudoscience are catchy, concise, and definitely worth a listen.