Cat-A-Tac – Past Lies and Former Lives Review
by Patrick Muldowney
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Eugenius and Jesus & Mary Chain, with a touch of The Zombies' attitude when they're at their best, Cat-A-Tac's Past Lies and Former Lives is stimulation for a downtrodden social sphere. Much like an 80s cassette, each half of the disc begins with the strongest tracks. "All I Knew" is one of the more interesting mood enhancers; building off a riff rather than a predictable chord progression, Andy Tennant develops a melody in the style of Steve Kilbey. With the buried (and filtered) vocals, plus the distant distortion and tambourine, creating a multi-layered perspective, this is the perfect song for a dark, lonely highway drive at 3 AM on a cloudless night.
During the moments Past Lies and Former Lives is not strong, it is downright bland. That is the one fault of playing music with few rhythmic changes; if a song lacks any draw, it continues to brutally deliver the same bars until the bitter end. "Respite" is one of those songs; slowly dragging through almost five minutes about women who lack development, the slight change to heavier guitar and drum at the midway point does not change the fact that this song fails to make the slightest statement musically or lyrically.
Given the Jekyll & Hyde quality of Cat-A-Tac's tunes, it is not surprising to see (inside cover) that this album "nearly broke up the band, but saved it in the end." Past Lies and Former Lives either passes into the mesosphere, or falls through the imperfections of the ozonosphere.
Tracks added to iPod: Needles and Pins, Past Lies and Former Lives, Burned, We're All Gone, All I Knew
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Cat-A-Tac – Past Lies and Former Lives
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