HOT SAKI & BEDTIME STORIES
CATHERINE'S blissful pop noise makes for a supercharged ride into the musical stratosphere, but iccasionally reality brings them back to earth. For chicago's CATHERINE, rock has proved to be both a road to ruin and a heavenly detour.
Touring their much-heralded, top 5 college album Sorry! two years ago, CATHERINE found themselves heading out of Las Vegas flush with cash and juiced on computer games. Just as the famed sin-city's neon lights were receding in the distance, the back axle of their bus broke and two wheels flew off the vehicle. Sitting by the roadside drinking champagne and playing Nintendo NBA Jam, CATHERINE awaited their tow back to Vegas where more trouble waited. "We had to go back to Las Vegas and as a result I gambled away all the money I had made," says singer-guitarist Mark Rew. "We went to the casino and played slot machines. I was winning for a while, up a few dollars; it was my first time in Vegas. But it didn't take very long to lose everything, it was gone really fast. I went down then watched everyone else lose their money also."
This slab of real life finds it way into CATHERINE'S newest pop plaything Hot Saki & Bedtime Stories in "Vegas Glam" as a lyric of positive defiance. Over beautifully crunchy guitars and a heat-seeking grove, Rew croons "I'm not going to stop until i've lost everything." In the spirit of hedonism and life lived at warp speed, that sentiment permeates Hot Saki & Bedtime Stories.
While 1993's Sleepy, produced by Billy Corgan, was a full-on headrush of bracing guitars, undeniable vocal hooks and adrenaline-charged rhythms and '94's Sorry! further explored that territory, Hot Saki is a dip into a more experimental, candy-colored world. With Rew now handling the lead vocals and guitar, CATHERINE reinvents itself as a psychidelic-glam pop quartet with vision and diversity.
Recorded at CATHERINE'S own studios on the apple farm of D'Arcy Brown (Smashing Pumpkins) and drummer Kerry Brown in southern Michigan, Hot Saki benefits from ample Moog explorations, acoustic guitar reveries, unusual percussion and homegrown sound effects. Working from a 70s Neotech mixing console, the album's production is as gloriously warm and powerful as the music. Where the old CATHERINE motto was "Better Living Through Noise", the updated aphorism could be "Pop Paradise Through Sonic Adventure." "It isn't that we tried to sound different," explains Rew, "we just wrote the songs and didn't compromise. We wouldn't let something out until it was as good as we could make it. It's writing and recording the music that we really wanted to do. Nothing more than that. The next album will probably be even more different. It's a cumulative thing from the first time you loved a song to the present, if there is something cool."
CATHERINE stalwarts Rew and Brown, plus Keith Brown (bass) and new member Scott Evers a/k/a Fever (guitar, fresh from an Urge Overkill tour), added the skills of D'Arcy Brown to the first single, "Flour Leaf Clover." A winsome tale of summer love laced with boy-girl allusions, the song recalls great duo tracks of the 60s. "Our studios are on their apple farm and there were many times that D'Arcy was around when she wasn't on tour. we wanted to have a female voice on the songs. It was easy to have her in and let her sing some stuff. With that I wanted to create a Sonny and Cher or Lee Hazelwood-Nancy Sinatra relationship song. I liked that feeling of a duet from that era but with more of a new sound."
A new sound - the catchphrase for Hot Saki & Bedtime Stories. From the tripped-out but ultimately harrowing vibes of "Pink Floyd Poster" to the Joan Jett punch of "Don't Touch Me" and "Cotton Candy High" to the childlike rumination of "Sign of the Cross", CATHERINE create swirling waves of wistful thoughts and guitar-driven dreams.
The trio of songs near the album's end ("Sign of the Cross", "The Angels", "Pink Floyd Poster") seem to work as a philosophical or occult trilogy, Rew denies any such notions. With their surfeit of intimate vocals and textured guitars, the songs recall the best of madcap Syd Barrett. "'Sign of the Cross' is so opposite of what you'd think," replies Rew. "I wrote it after my son was born. The song came about one morning when he was waking up. I brought my guitar in to sing to him and just played the same repetitive chords and wrote the words while I was singing to him. It's just me singing to my son. Knowing that, you can understand it the lines, 'You're not sucking my blood, you're sucking your thumb.' He's fascinated by vampires and monsters. It's really very innocent, nothing freaky at all."
And the religious symbolism of "The Angels" and drug bliss of "Pink Floyd Poster"? "'The Angels' is a song about living fun, fast and never being satisfied. And getting killed. On 'Pink Floyd Poster' I wanted to capture something detached from life but not dead or lifeless. When you're a kid, maybe stoned in your friend's room, you want to feel something weird. You almost put yourself in a trance, you wanted it so bad. And that trance worked, you don't have to take the LSD. To me, 'Sign of the Cross' is a very warm song though musically it's slightly creepy. But once you understand what the lyrics are about it has a very special place."
Innocence or corruption? Childlike fascination or monsterous revelations? On Hot Saki & Bedtime Stories CATHERINE drink deep from the well of pop power and offer all for the taking.
publicity: Mark Satlof at Shore Fire Media 718-522-7171
management: Management by Jaffe 212-869-6912
booking: Rob Light at Creative Artists Agency 310-288-4545
for more information, please contact
TVT Records 23 East 4th Street New York, NY 10003
phone 212-979-6489