sweet catatonia (2)

Cerys Matthews has had her ups and downs.

Catatonia made some great 90s indie--"Mulder and Scully" and "Road Rage" for starters--but at the height of the their fame the band self-imploded amid reports that Matthews was sinking into one of those drink and drugs hells you read about now and then in the tabloids.

After moving to Nashville to put her life back together, she seemed to be back on track in 2003 when her first solo album, the "country-tinged" Cockahoop received an amount of critical acclaim.

She rather slipped off the rails again in a few years later with a toe-curling onscreen romance on "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me out of Here!" (I'm a big fan, obviously), but she's now rehabilitated again as a regular weekday DJ on BBC 6Music.

A couple of weeks ago her new single, "Arlington Way", was (unfairly I think) dismissed by Radcliffe and Maconie as a "Warwick Avenue" wannabe. (It's named after a London street. It's sung by a Welsh woman.) I quite like it though.

I have also, coincidentally, spent many happy hours in the Shakespeare's Head pub in this same London thoroughfare. It serves Courage Best and has a free jukebox.

(There's a rather glossy official video if you want--also a Welsh language version of same (!)--but I prefer this TV studio clip where she sings it live in front of what I'm sure is an appreciatively discerning GMTV audience.)



Also recommended:

Cerys Matthews - 08 Seed Song.mp3

Found at: http://www.filestube.com

See also: Sweet Catatonia (1)

record yr wythnos*

*Single of the week. From up-and-coming Cardiffians:



"Sun-dappled pop with wit and gay abandon" it says here, so hoorah for that...

sweet catatonia

I've been listening again recently to some of my albums from the nineties: the first two Garbage albums and Way Beyond Blue and International Velvet by Catatonia. ("Not," according to Wikipedia "to be confused with Katatonia, a Swedish metal band". Er yes. Thanks for that.) There's some good stuff on these records. Garbage fizzled out after their first album really, although I really like "You look so fine" on Version 2. Such a great arrangement. Catatonia had some excellent songs too, were much more than another Britpop band. On the look-out for Welsh music up in the hen wlad fy nhadau last weekend, I spotted the new Cerys Matthews album and decided to take a punt on it, having heard the single a couple of times. Really good. Again, some great songs, more acoustic than the old Catatonia stuff but thankfully supposedly not as "countrified" as her first solo album, Cockahoop. Best tracks: "Seed song" and "The Endless Rain".

Some more Cerys stuff from a cursory google:
- an interview from the BBC Wales site
- her myspace page
- official cm site
- the Guardian low-down

our favourite shop II

Did a big trawl of the downstairs racks in HMV Oxford Street today. This is where they have what they call their "specialist" categories: easy listening, musicals, classical, soundtracks, folk, world music and jazz. Picked up a few choice CDs:

1. Huw Warren & Lleuwen Steffan: Duw A Wyr (God Only Knows) - I'd been intrigued by this since I saw a review of it in "Time Out" a few months ago: Welsh hymns sung in Welsh by a solo woman singer to jazz piano accompaniments. Probably not going to take the charts by storm but I like it. (Warren was June Tabor's accompanist at the gig I went to a while ago.)

2. Vashti Bunyan: Just another diamond day - From the "folk" racks. Been on my shopping list for a while. This was the album she made in 1970, released on CD in 2000 and now even available as an MP3 download. Doesn't seem right...

3. Tony Allen: Lagos no shaking - Top class Afrobeat from Fela Kuti's ex-drummer and his band. Gets a good write up in OMM too.

4. Astrud Gilberto: The Genius of Astrud Gilberto - 51 tracks (count 'em) for £5.99, got to be done. I can throw my old Greatest Hits cassette away now.