Cats on Fire are a Finnish four-piece who have been around since 2001. After releasing an EP last year this is their first full-length album. An old biography on their website has two interesting nuggets: that they tried to be as un-ROCK as possible for their first ever gig, and that the mentality of the band has always been to be serious and un-ironic.

For a band of non-Brits this is probably one of the most English-sounding, or certainly Anglophile records you could hope to find. The first thing that will strike you on this album is the clear debt owed to The Smiths. This can be heard in the very Morrissey-like vocal: on most tracks but particularly on the minor-key “Heat and Romance” and “The Sharp End of a Season”. There is a definite Smiths-like way with words too: “We’re getting tired of your antics / Well so am I” from “Higher Grounds” and “Your name / forgettably plain” from “Heat and Romance” could convincingly pass for Morrissey lyrics; whilst “Chain of Saints” sounds strikingly similar to the Manchester band’s “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want”.

It would be misleading, however, and unfair, to write this band off as a Smiths tribute band. There is very much here to enjoy. Other less obvious influences emerge on repeated listenings: Pulp, for example, can be heard in the Jarvis-esque “kiss of” line used in “The Smell of an Artist” and the “uh-huh”s in “Draw in the Reins” and there’s even a couple of Beatles-y “Oooh”s in “Higher Grounds”.

Lyrically things are interesting, with much use made of surprising out-of-the-ordinary metaphors. The prime example of this is on the superb opener “I Am The White-Manteled King”, where the singer describes his feelings on a broken relationship whilst “Folding bedsheets on my own” and pretending to be “A bedouin leader” who “doesn’t need her”. An arresting and original image, and a break-up song that manages to be uplifting rather than depressing. “On Mesmer and Reason” they sing, intriguingly, about “Wash my hands with this woman’s tears”, on an odd but nonetheless stand-out track. They also do ire to great effect on “Born Again Christian” who they refer to as a “phoney” that they “despise” and on “The Smell of an Artist” (“…it’s a shameless piece of shit”), all backed with Hammond organ and jaunty jangly guitars, and upbeat melodies to sugar the pill.

Cats on Fire then: certainly they sound like fairly serious, un-ironic and non-ROCK (if we are talking ‘rock’ with a capital RAWWWW) chaps. What they have, instead, is a charm of their own, and an endearing way with melody and words, combined with a distinctly 80′s overall feel. I would say that on the evidence found here, this is greatly preferable.
80%

Links
Cats on Fire [official site] [myspace] [buy it]