Cat Empire

[eirias]

Tonight we went to see a band that my old RA turned me onto, an Australian band called Cat Empire. She's actually the tour manager for their current US tour (she has a bit of experience booking bands and such). Anyway, she'd played some for me in the lab but I had no memory of what they sounded like. I dragged Graham anyway. We're both really glad, and now I'm sorry I didn't bring more people. The band is a fun and artistic mix of Latin, reggae, ska, turntables, and throat singing. And it's impossible not to dance to their music - Graham gets pretty nervous about dancing but by the end he dragged me onto the floor to boogie. Incredibly cool. We bought a CD. Since we're doing the midnight Woodman's run at cheapass Community Car rates, we stopped in the new coffee shop on Willy Street (brief review: okay drinks, good cookies, extremely friendly staff, fascinatingly huge multi-room setup) for some caffeine, and got into a conversation with the barista about the band we'd just seen and the CD we'd just bought. He put it on the coffee shop stereo and I think everyone in the place became a convert.

And while I'm channeling cynic51 and cosmusic, I might as well mention that later this month I'm going to see concerts by Ben Folds, Leo Kottke, the Decemberists, and Canadian Brass. Woot.

Also, not only did I miss Sigur Ros by 1 day in Madison, I'm going to miss them by 2 days in Helsinki. Boo.

Comments

[eldan.livejournal.com]

and I missed Sigur Ros by 1 day in either direction in Seattle. Boo indeed.

cynic51's sister in MN comments

[(Anonymous)]

Cynic51 and I saw the Cat Empire at the Falls Festival in Lorne, Victoria last year when we were in Aus. They were good, but not the best of what we saw. . . . check out John Butler Trio if you have a chance. They were just in Minneapolis though . . . .

Re: cynic51's sister in MN comments

[cynic51.livejournal.com]

Rachel, are you stalking my friends again?

And I had completely forgotten about seeing Cat Empire, probably because they weren't even of the top 5 best bands we saw at Falls Fest.

Re: cynic51's sister in MN comments

[(Anonymous)]

If you call "awake and slighly drunk at 2 AM and surfing the internet because you're too lazy to go to bed" stalking, then yes, yes I was:)

Re: cynic51's sister in MN comments

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Huh. Well, I'll have to conclude one of a few things:
1) They played a bad show (hard to imagine; concert and album show equal levels of musical prowess)
2) You and I have different musical tastes
3) The Falls Festival was just that good.

So, which is it? :)

Re: cynic51's sister in MN comments

[cynic51.livejournal.com]

(1) They played a pretty good show, but what works in a small to medium sized club is not so good at a massive outdoor arena. I think if I had seen them at the Beachland or another more intimate club I would have liked them better.

(2) While I think that my taste in music covers far more genres, I also think that your taste overlaps large portions of mine. Exhibit 1 would be how excited I got looking at your jointly owned CD collection, or by how much I liked the stuff G. played while we were playing cards.

Or if we had a Venne diagram the circle representing your musical taste would be almost completely inside the circle representing my musical taste :-)

(3) It was just that good.
DAY 1 -- Missy Higgins, Billy Bragg, The Cat Empire,
Veruca Salt, You Am I, The John Butler Trio
DAY 2 -- Donavon Frankenreiter, The Thrills, Xavier Rudd,
Spiderbait, De La Soul, The Black Keys

On day 1, Billy Bragg and the John Butler Trio were better. On day 2, De La Soul and The Black Keys were better. Missy Higgins, Donavon Frankenreiter and Xavier Rudd were roughly equal or better to The Cat Empire, depending on taste. I don't remember Spiderbait or The Thrills clearly, and Veruca Salt and You Am I just sucked.

I remember Cat Empire as having a really great rhythm section that was not adequately supported by the rest of the group.

[gieves.livejournal.com]

Just for you, today I played a song from Cat Empire's Two Shoes on my show. :-)

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Aw! Yay! What did you think?

(We bought the other album instead. But I think Two Shoes was the one with songs that may have involved throat singing. We couldn't tell in advance since we'd not heard much before the concert.)

[gieves.livejournal.com]

I like it! Much of what I heard - in my brief chance to preview - sounded weirdly reminiscent of the Barenaked Ladies, only more ska. I didn't catch throat singing but also didn't hear all the tracks on the CD. I'll have to listen to the rest when I next get to the station.