Taking Sides, etc: Catatonia vs Black Box Recorder

And the Auteurs' last album, "How I Learned to Love the Bootboys" - it's basically Black Box Recorder, except with Luke Haines still on the lead vocals

(Poss the covers are only better because their own lyrics are so fucking pretentious though)

(Opens Soulseek and types in the search window...)

You would like them if the bit in Mulder and Scully where she's all "my bed is full of yooooooo" seems exciting, because all their records pretty much sound like that. 'I Am The Mob' is great, 'For Tinkerbell' is great, sod it, 'Road Rage' is a really really joyous indielite growling single, I don't care if it was all over capital FM.

I wouldn't go that far but I like it. By the way, if this one is a Search, then their take on "Seasons in the Sun" is a definite Destroy. Very ill-advised.

Now their "cover" of "Uptown Top Ranking" = CLASSIC.

Now their "cover" of "Uptown Top Ranking" = CLASSIC

I'm maybe biased because I heard the cover first, admittedly. It's funny that you hate their SitS, because I rather rate it, it's always seemed like them dropping off the post-indie pose a second, treating the song as an equal. (and that guitar kick-in on the "Michelle" line!). But yes, the uptown cover is awesome.

Joseph Cotton picked some good songs, though I have to say that I find 'French Rock n Roll' the only DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY track on 'The Facts Of Life'

Search:

England made me: title track, Uptown Top Ranking, Child Psychology, Girl Singing In the Wreckage, I C One Female (God, this was a dark album. Facts of Life is positively upbeat by comparison)

The Facts Of Life: The English Motorway System; The Art Of Driving, title track; The Deverell Twins

Passionoia: School Song; British Racing Green; Andrew Ridgeley; These are The Things (much 'happier' than the other albums. Although still not what you'd call chirpy)

This thread has reminded me that I never bought 'The Worst of...' and really should have done.

Hmmm.

Based on what I'm hearing out of the speakers right now... Maybe, instead of pitting BBR againt (Catatonia|Sleeper|Elastica), I should've pitted them against...I, dunno...Portishead...
or Edith Piaf...or something.

To fully appreciate BBR, you need to wait until the horrific imagery (it's pretty much all plane and car crashes, murder, and class war) sinks in with the sweet sweet pop.

I was gonna say, this isn't the greatest of comparisons...

But no, BBR by a street in so far as I have all their albums inc. The Worst Of (which I like the best, oddly enough), and the first single I ever bought was 'The Art Of Driving'. And amazingly, no-one's pointed out my favourite of them all, 'It's Only The End Of The World', which really is quite breathtakingly bleak but in an amazing kind of way.

And yet, lately I've been going off them a bit. They keep coming up on the shuffle on the iPod and I keep skipping them cos they get annoying, particularly the Passionoia stuff. I can't actually listen to 'Girl's Guid For The Modern Diva' anymore, because it just sort of sounds like the kind of pop song Ian Hislop might write...

I still love them, mind. John Moore is a very, very nice man. And he co-writes all the songs, which everyone always forgets.

i love bbr. i find their contrived coldness and cynicism strangely comforting to listen to. i like sarah nixey's blank delivery as well. i think maybe they have run out of ideas though - passanoia was good, but i wouldn't feel the need to play it much, when i'm already familiar with (and fond of) the first two.

catatonia? they're ok. i thought the album after international velvet was actually a superior follow-up, even if it was the point where their chart success tailed off. can't remember the name of that album, but there was a really nice track with harp and sweeping strings in the middle. i liked cerys' voice too.

bbr win, of course.

Also props to Valerian from the third album and Village Idiots from the fourth which are both Perfect Songs (as far as I recall). The Bjork comparisons always seemed a bit wonky because Cerys was Snarly Ladette while Bjork was Integrityful Artiste OBV but then again Valerian is Isobel trying to hide under a rock and not draw attention to itself and is softly rolling soaring splendour etc. And Village Idiots could have been Dexys (at a push).

Much as I love them, I can't think of anything to say about BBR at all. I'm not even sure that the world needs a fourth BBR records (but then at the time I didn't think it really needed a second one and how wrong wrong wrong I was about that).

About the closest thing to Black Box Recorder I can think of at present is David Wrench, who deserves to be more popular than he is.

Now that that's out of the way, we can go back to talking about music.

Around the time of the first Catatonia album all the NME/Select/MM etc kids seemed to of the opinion that vocally Cerys was closer to Bjork than anyone else contemporary that they could think of, I think the this was intended to highlight how, by having technically perfect v.distinctive golden-throated frontperson as opposed to random generic hiccuping breathless indielady, they were classy & innovative artisans in a way that Powder/Fluffy/Northern Uproar were clearly not. This may even have been true.