Grateful Cat
Ready To Go Anywhere

Monty Python – The Meaning of Life, remember the ending? "Well, that's the meaning of life. Well, it's nothing special: be nice to people, don't eat fatty foods, read a good book, get some walking in and try to live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations."
Let's add “Listen to a good record” ( @DaniP. keeps putting together updated and touching lists!) and we're all set.

Here are these two little Germans, Gwendolin Tägert and Franky Fuzz, Berliners under the sky, on a ridiculous cover: he's on the sidecar pulling a dumb-ass face, sporting a Gallagher haircut; she, who’s certainly not beautiful, "sings" however with a gaze more beautiful than ever. Sweet. But not saccharine. Essentially sweet.
Could their musical goal be to correct the Vaselines? Could this ever be (or “qvesto”) a purpose in music? Something this damn… niche… like correcting a rather obscure older brother? The idea is crooked, unbalanced. Wrong: melodic folk with vocal harmonies grafted onto the naive notepad of the noisy and certainly amateurish, lo-fi Scots? To transfigure them? And why not?
So here comes this album, their second, released under a name as silly as can be, Grateful Cat (Come on, really!), but the record contains the most beautiful gaze ever, or let’s say the most beautiful inclination of that gaze, of whoever is looking. Who is traversing music these days, October–December 2025, strumming just a few things but sincerely, singing simple harmonies but really meaning it, handling sad thoughts, but truly? Them, shining a little late-summer-sunlight on their music: late-summer pop. (Nothing against @Annette’s lagnarock, to be clear—I live on that stuff too, but in the end you’re redeemed with Tom Waits, just like his characters…) …and today I want to be happy. I’d rather be cheerful in a studio apartment than unhappy in a castle. Like the Grateful Cats! Where their cheer comes from, who knows. Nor their gratitude. Have they ever listened to the Vaselines? Cobain would have appreciated them just as much, maybe finding himself less let down by his frustrated hypotheses of life’s beauty.

But how much does this indie folk pop, the one from Ready To Go Anywhere, really pack in, without taking itself seriously? Quite a lot. Somewhere between Laurel Canyon and Greenwich Village (and Southern California). And nicely done. It’s retro: it quotes, “apes,” the ‘60s folk (“Uh uh ah ah”), parades (sans skis) some ‘90s power pop, pulls out sofa cushions of bossa nova, dusts off and gives us a country feedback (eh?). The album was crystal-clear recorded in an old, in-need-of-renovation apartment kitchen. Pretty much like friendly and polite Vaselines. Vaselines were friendly but a bit snotty. Let’s say they’ve learned to play, to tinkle, and that for six months they listened only to the Beach Boys or sunshine pop. Still not that close? Yes. But there were always two of them. Which is relevant.


The beauty of the world is in the Devero mountains of @De…Marga… or in the roar of the waves in a field recording by @mrbluesky. It’s not something we possess. It’s out there. Out of reach. Either you settle or you’re screwed. But if you settle, you say: uh! Or even: UH! And that’s already something. There’s beauty even in one of the many kicks in the ass life gives you. Because it’s instructive… Being willing to lose something you’re attached to; bleeding your way from many frustrations to a few, better desires. An unknown record that makes you feel at home in a damn moment of unexpectedness. So melodious it puts back the smile you’d been missing for a while. And I’ve fallen in love with “Jesus On Her Toast.” And “Food Delivery Guy” is a great track on the album. And enough with the sermons.

“Now, if any of you are leaving this afternoon, please move your clothes to the lower pegs after lunch. When you write your letter home, if you don't need a haircut and if you don't have a younger brother staying at a friend's house for the weekend, in which case collect your report card before lunch, enclose it in your letter after you’ve had your hair cut and make sure he moves his clothes to the lower pegs.” Long live the GC!