Catatonia : Greatest Hits
To their detractors, Catatonia were little more than sturdy student-union indie but the presence of Cerys Matthews always elevated them above the Britpop rank-and-file. It's hard to be workmanlike when you're dressed like a thrift-store Shirley...
Catatonia : Stone By Stone
It's a funny thing about decades. They never really get started 'till a couple of years in. It wasn't until 1992 that everyone agreed to stop wearing shoulder pads and dancing like robots from the future. And so it is in the summer of 2001 that we...
Catatonia : Stone By Stone
Thanks to Cerys Matthews finally recovering from a severe case of rock'n'roll-induced depression, Catatonia are back from the brink of splitting up. By the sounds of this single, though, all is still not well. They've ditched their trademark...
Catatonia : Glasgow Lighthouse
So it's come to this. Have Catatonia moved so far from the underground that not only does the PA spout Boyzone before they some on, but half the audience sing along? Crowd-spotting's always an enlightening experience and if Catatonia had...
Catatonia : Karaoke Queen
Enough already with the charming vignettes of modern life. One of those records made by people who describe themselves as being in 'pop groups' but are seemingly completely unaware of any accidental joy in, or fun to be had accidentally from the...
London Hyde Park
Welcome to hell. This is the day of final reckoning, according to Nostradamus , and it certainly feels that way. This mammoth Prince's Trust bash is essentially a Wembley-scale concentration camp rammed to bursting point with a Glastonbury...
Port Talbot Margam Park
" Gianluca Vialli /he sleeps with the fishes ", hollers Cerys in 'Eye Yamma Mob'. What? Is this an oblique attack on the cokehounds of the London music biz (' Vialli ' being Welsh rhyming slang for 'Charlie', obviously). Or is it a snide...
Catatonia : Dead from the waist down
"Make hay not war" gurgles New Girlie Cerys Matthews as the strings swoop sweetly, the birdies tweet, and happy, laughing scarecrows skip over the horizon into the sunrise and all is well with the world. Hay, you see, not war. Hay good. War...
Equally Cursed And Blessed
Orchestras are the Ebola of pop. They creep in almost unnoticed, turn your internal talent to mush and have you spouting liquefied slush from every orifice within days. We've lost the Manics , Oasis and Travis to this evil plague already,...
Derby Assembly Halls
A long, long time ago, way beyond blue in fact, an odd-looking Welsh five-piece were booked to play Camden's Dublin Castle. Alas, they did not appear for the load-in or soundcheck. Nor indeed had they shown up by the time the two support acts...
