Catherine Wheel
Happy Days

THE REVIEW

Let's pretend, for a few minutes, that it's 1995. Grunge is practically the only style with which a white guy and his band can hope to grab the attention of those who still find twenty bucks for a CD. What would you do if you were in one of those bands? I forgot to tell you that you're not even American: would you pretend to come from Hendrix's city too? In hindsight, given the miserable end of certain clone bands, chances are you'd choose to stay in your place. Or maybe not, you might try to release two albums that hit the charts, marry a brash beauty like Gwen Stefani, have her give birth a couple of times with the knowledge that you've already earned the money to send them, one day, to study at the University of Camerino. Whatever choice you make, I would understand you and, deep in my heart, forgive you.

What I really don't understand, however, is why Catherine Wheel, a band that was fundamentally shoegaze until then, already with a couple of spectacular albums under their belt, at that time also made this decisive step towards such radio-friendly sounds. Tired of being niche, cult? Disappointed because they saw themselves surpassed/overwhelmed at home by Britpop (and by Radiohead who were opening their concerts) and in America by grunge?

Britpop is a genre with an undoubted derivative matrix that has never been in question; the protagonists of grunge, as discussed extensively on this site, didn't invent anything; if anything, they synthesized decades of anti-divas and alternative and more or less unpolished music... But even there, nothing truly original. So why, I ask, would a band from perhaps the only truly original subgenre of rock in the '90s (shoegaze, indeed) choose to equate themselves, to align, perhaps even in the hope of blending into the grunge whirlwind?

In detail, the tracklist of this "Happy Days" from '95: "God Inside My Head" would fit well on an A Perfect Circle CD (whose founders were active at that time); in "Way Down" they sound a bit like Hole; "Little Muscle" is a cross between a sweetened garage rock and the Foo Fighters of "All My Life." Even "Empty Head" is another garage grunge, while "Receive" is a mid-tempo that seems like an outtake from "Siamese Dream." And it continues, eh! "My Exhibition," in certain ways, seems like "Do The Evolution" by Pearl Jam; "Hole" is another rock that's as hard hard as it is easy easy. And in the final "Kill My Soul," Dickinson and company mix their artistic peaks with the "grunge beat" of certain works by Screaming Trees.

All done with great skill, and with more than decent inspiration. Probably, if released in '92, it would have been a work on par with the milestones of the (sub-)genre, but in 1992 Catherine Wheel certainly weren't thinking of synthesizing decades of others' independence, rather they were intent, with the sublime "Ferment," on declaring their own to the whole world, even at the cost of leaving the glory of top chart positions to others. And so Cobain is a legend, Grohl, Vedder and friends are great realities even today; on the other side, Radiohead unites both audience and critics, and My Bloody Valentine is the first (and for many also the only) name that comes to mind when thinking of shoegaze. And of Catherine Wheel, except here on DeBaser, of course, no trace.