Prince of Wales

Review

Review by Silverthorn in the forums. Thanks!

Well, they certainly did battle at this gig. A capacity crowd, the horn section in force, a Friday night, and The Cat fought with their music.

As the crowd waited for their emergence, there was an urgency to the room. One happy but impatitent hardcore fan yelled into the empty stage "It used to be about the music" trying to encourage the boys from the recesses of backstage.

A faithful gaggle of girls had secured their prime position for the night, in front of Ollie's keyboard. His white chair sat empty, a throne patiently waiting for its coming King.

Just as the crowd went into their third round chant of cajolling, the lads agreeably graced the small stage. As Jumps emerged for his second look at the crowd (he'd warmed the crowd up with some earlier deck work) the rest of the boys quickly drunk in the crowd's energy.

New material overlayed the old favorites, reaching back into the archives for Two Shoes. The set list was lost on me... I was too overwhelmed to remember specifics re. song list and order.

The tapestry that is The Cat Empire just gets richer - The Tedesco Brothers, Nina Ferro, Julie O'Hara, the dance fest. Even with all these threads coming together, expertly twisting and blending, Felix still humbly applauded the vivid colours that truly feature in this work of art - the crowd.

It felt to me like musical osmosis...the boys were pouring out their tunes and each note was drawn in, manifesting in a crowd that could not stop dancing, even if they tried. At one point Harry ambitiously tried to get the crowd to be still, until the chorus of (can any fans that were present help me with a title???), where he lead the crowd in a slow, swaying stomp.

A slightly bewildered crowd looked on as both Harry and Felix had fumbling moments. Harry laughed off his two attempts to fix a line sung out of tune, but Felix seemed more ruffled, taking a seat on the stage at the edge of the drum kit, trying to remember the words to a song he would have chanted hundreds of times before. A few faithfuls yelled out the words when asked by Felix to help out, and the momentum took force once again.

As the words of "Nothing" swam around the crowd, it was pretty apparent. This crowd, whether hardcore fans, or first-timers, realised there was something about this instant, something about this minute, and for a time, the future was here.