Catherine Wheel
Adam And Eve

THE REVIEW

<<Europe... When we play the most rock songs in concerts, people stand still; when we play the slower ones, we see the audience going wild...>>. So (or more or less) said at the time a certain mademoiselle D'Arcy, a blonde better known for being the bassist of the Smashing Pumpkins until the recording of "Machina"; the statement, I remember, I read during one of those interviews promoting an upcoming album, and the album was "Adore," from 1998.

A strange place, Europe, for an American band. Especially with grunge breathing its last, along with all its fashion. And how strange is Europe if the band is an English band that has had feedback almost exclusively in the United States? The Catherine Wheel, four formidable English shoegazers who, despite not having colossal sales, took root in the US, then moved to (post)grunge sounds (perhaps in the hope of establishing themselves in America and at the same time being more noticed at home), chose with this "Adam And Eve" to change identity for the third time in four albums. All of this seemed to be to conquer this damn Europe, its radios, its televisions. Yes, its televisions... MTV and Videomusic, in Italy, at that time (the year was 1997), along with the usual black and dance mishmash, along with new phenomena like Prodigy or Chemical Brothers, were proposing British pop and indie in a storm. But what, exactly, on TV, was white, British, and pop-rock at the time of this "Adam And Eve"? Nothing less than that failure "Be Here Now" by Oasis, the Indian poppers Kula Shaker and Cornershop... I know you're wrinkling your nose at the thought, but there were significantly better discs, like "In It For The Money" by Supergrass, the first of Stereophonics, the self-titled album by Blur with their "Song #2"... And again, whether we like them or not, I don't think it's right to ignore Suede with "Coming Up" and their famous "Beautiful Ones" and the Placebo of "Without You I'm Nothing" and "Pure Morning".

In a context like that, and if the context had truly been only that, accepting that the Catherine Wheel went down another step towards the pop song would have been more than acceptable: they would have, without a shadow of a doubt, outdone "weaker" competitors by several points, easily surpassed the mediocre ones to place themselves without effort at least on par with Suede and the best Placebo ever.

This "Adam And Eve" of theirs, released in 1997, with singles and corresponding music videos aired on TV that year and the following one, is an indie-rock record that placed them within the melting pot as a heavier reality than what had to be "a whole family." The family, of course, wasn't there at all, and the Catherine Wheel never had (and would have) not played nor written music in that way before 1997.

A British indie-rock album heavier than the others, but still indie, and therefore not ashamed, aside from the intro, to start with a ballad, and to alternate more rock episodes with quieter atmospheres with (a bit too much) frequency. That said, however, there remains nothing but to appreciate the psychedelia of the aforementioned opening ballad "Future Boy", the almost soul-pop "Good Bye", the superb performance of the less good "Phantom Of The American Mother", and the super autumnal "Ma Solituda", perhaps their most famous song in Italy. Just as one cannot help but appreciate very successful rock episodes such as the emblem of the album "Delicious", the punk-wave melody of "Broken Nose" and the very enjoyable well-calibrated rock of "Satellite". These are rock songs that slide well without hitches, that (finally!) have nothing to do with and to hear with post-grunge, and that sound fresh to indie-gene ears fed on MTV.

"Adam And Eve" is therefore a hard pop album that rightly places Catherine Wheel at the top, in terms of quality, of the list of artists I previously mentioned, and finally takes Rob Dickinson's band around European TVs. The problem is that the list of bands wasn't finished there, with Placebo... Missing from the list are albums undoubtedly superior to "Adam And Eve": "Urban Hymns" by the Verve and "Everything Must Go" by the Manic Street Preachers, not to mention "OK Computer" by Radiohead, those who, at the beginning of the '90s, opened for Catherine Wheel.

The Catherine Wheel and the Radiohead: two overlapping and opposite stories. While the first ones were very original, daring, and "perfect", the second ones were more song-like and immature (compare "Ferment" and "Chrome" to "Pablo Honey"). And while Radiohead were rising in artistic level and maturity, Catherine Wheel were "descending" towards massification. So in 1997, while the "masters" embraced British indie only to get lost (they would publish another record, which will be a flop, and disappear), the "students" presented an unthinkable album, conquering a place in history and another on shelves worldwide, putting us all in agreement.

Life is sometimes a truly surprising thing... Take for example the beautiful Rob Dickinson smiling in the "Ma Solituda" video and the face of Thom Yorke in apnea inside a glass bowl full of water, in the "No Surprises" video... If you didn't know either of them, who would you point to, between the two, as the successful one?