One of the most well-travelled, beloved, and universally lauded bands to ever come from Australia has once again unveiled an album of new songs that are boldly entertaining, deftly experimental, delightfully compelling and just a whole lot of fun to listen, dance and sing along to.
Released on Feb. 15, Stolen Diamonds is the eighth studio album from Melbourne-based The Cat Empire over the last 16 years and had been generating great anticipation from the band’s world-wide fan base since the release of the infectious, groove-oriented single Barricades in January.
Comprised of co-founders Felix Riebl, Ollie McGill and Ryan Monro, the group started off as a jazz trio, but expanded their numbers and sound with the addition of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Harry James Angus, drummer Will Hull-Brown and Jamshid ‘DJ Jumps’ Khadiwhala (turntables, percussion, dancer) in 2001.
Over the years, the band’s unique, genre-defying, highly accessible, international-sounding music has garnered fans spanning culture, geography and demography. Tours are generally lengthy and encompass venues all over the globe. The band is currently in Canada in the midst of a run across the country, with shows in Montreal March 5, Toronto on March 7, March 8 in Waterloo, before heading west to Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria later in the month.
Trying to define the sound or genre of The Cat Empire is a mug’s game, and one that band members don’t even try to engage in any more. And according to vocalist/co-founder/composer/percussionist Riebl, the lack of genre, the open-ended definition of their sound is now considered to be a point of pride amongst the group, and one of The Cat Empire’s defining traits. Journalists have invoked terms such as Ska, Latin, reggae and alternative, in varying combinations, usually hyphenated with the word pop. Onstage the band adds to the mystification for critics with the inclusion of horns, a full-on string section and a troupe of dancers.
“It’s a question I still can’t answer after 18 years, and I am not even being cute by saying that. For a long time, it kind of irked me, and now I have come down to the point where I am proud of that. I can’t actually describe the band and to be honest with you, I can’t even describe the audience that comes to see our band. They are as different as the music is. But in both cases, there is something distinct about them; you know it when you see it, you just can’t find the words for it and that’s kind of the same with our sound,” he explained.
“And the words that have been used to describe us sometimes drive me up the wall. People used to call us a Ska band, but we’re not a Ska band at all. Yeah, we were influenced by Jamaican music at a certain point when we were young, and those things have crept in at different points, but it’s not that at all. The extent of our influences goes a lot deeper than that and it’s really a wide collection of bands and artists that have influenced us. But it’s also something that we have been able to create ourselves.”
For the last few albums, the band has been on a fairly consistent three-year cycle of releases with Stolen Diamonds coming three years after Rising With the Sun, which came three years after Steal the Light. So Many Nights, the band’s fourth record, was released in 2007, starting the three-year trend.
“It’s kind of a machine, isn’t it? It’s a machine of deep emotion and exertion – that’s the music cycle of touring bands like us. I think the live performances really inform each album because we’ve always been a live band; we’ve always thrived under the atmosphere that’s been created between an audience that’s come with some expectations and a band that gets there with a sense of expectation as well. And that’s the spirit of live music where you want those expectations to collide beautifully together on that particular night. And I guess over the years we’ve been able to do,” said Riebl.
“When you tour, you bring the songs that you created in a studio space to life onstage and they morph and transform and then eventually you get tired of them and you need some new blood in there. And the tour itself has exhausted you enough and filled you with enough moving images that you can’t explain, that you’re exhausted to the point where something breaks open in you and you need to write a new bunch of songs.
“So, depending on what day you ask musician about it, they can talk to you about it in suffering terms or in the most celebratory terms. It’s that sort of a process where you demand of yourself emotionally and physically a state that is then the right kind of state to write new songs. There is a sick logic to it; you’re exhausted, and you have to fill yourself up with music again, and then you might rest for a while but then go back into the studio and pour it all out again. The studio and the new album really just sets up the next tour. The album itself is one thing that may live in people’s houses, but that’s not your business any more, your business is how those songs are going to transform on stage and how are you going to do it all again.”
Riebl and his bandmates believe in the importance of creating new music, as stated above, as almost an experience in spiritual revitalization, as well as a way to continue to explore their artistry individually and as a collective entity. Compiling the collected outpourings of this process into a traditional album format is also something that The Cat Empire continues to feel is valid and viable.
“I am always writing, and writing is the thing that I enjoy the most, that I get the best kicks out of. When I am on tour I am often thinking of songs and when I finish a tour, it’s almost like the only way to process all of that movement, which at the time you really can’t, is to pour it out at home. When you get home to a quiet space, let’s say gathering for a meal or a quiet room, then all of a sudden all of the months of blurriness pulls into focus and you can remember shows and you can almost remember landscapes and try to turn those memories and feelings and observations into new music. And even though we are pretty regular in terms of the timing for our album releases, I don’t have a set timeframe. If I wasn’t writing all along, I would have to force things out when it came time to do a new album like Stolen Diamonds,” he explained.
“Because every tour has its own experiences and memories, every album has its own kind of vibe. Although The Cat Empire, for whatever reason; it’s instrumentation, its personalities, has a sound. It’s like an atmosphere that you can click into and it’s not something we can really control very much. It’s the sum of all our parts coming together. Then you make very deliberate decisions in terms of the producer you work with, and what kind of approach to take. And it’s interesting because I feel that the album is just as relevant as it ever has been, even though we are no longer confined to the limitations of the medium. It you think about it, a compact disc or a vinyl record has a certain amount of time to be filled. And even though today you could make an infinite album if you wanted to if you just did it digitally, there is still something about having a collection of songs.
“Stolen Diamonds is a collection of 13 songs which are a moment in time for the band, where we sort of figured out where we were at that time. We can’t explain what it is. I can talk to you about the production that we had, or approaches we had in the studio or about working with Jan [Skubiszewski] the producer and making very deliberate decisions like not rehearsing and just going into the studio and the band learning in there. For whatever reason, the combination of things come together to make a collection of songs that have an atmosphere an that atmosphere follows you for the next touring cycle.”
With the music itself – the chords, melodies, rhythms, tones and actual structure of songs being so important to the members of The Cat Empire, all of whom have such a varied agglomeration of styles and influences, Riebl says there is an interesting dynamic tension within the group that invokes a creative crucible through which all songs need to first experience before making the cut. It’s a tension between virtuosity and experimentation, and the need to create memorable melodies, choruses and songs that are fun and accessible.
“For me, it feels as if this album is the third part of a trilogy that began with Steal the Light, which is not to say that they all sound the same, but we did choose to make them with the same producer and the producer is a bit like a director on a film: they put their paws on everything, sonically. For these three albums, and probably Stolen Diamonds the most, we wanted to make music that would really challenge us musically, but also be able to be sung back to us by a big crowd. There’s always been this big tension that’s run through this band where half the band wants to just improvise and stretch things and really mess around and go places that really distort the songs. And then the other half wants to have those great festival moments where you hear the thousands of people singing your melody, which is really simple and pure and direct,” he explained.
“And that tension has always been one of the things that gives this band it’s character, or a lot of the character anyways, because those two approaches are always fighting against each other. And on an album, you want a bit of that combustion and I think on an album more than live, you find that combustion through parts that really challenge musicians in one way, where everyone is really having to strain their heads and their palms and whatever they use to play their instruments to play the parts well and really concentrate on them. So, it’s really about the music and your facility as a musician.
“But then on the other hand, we want to write songs that would give you those moments where you don’t have to work so hard on stage, because the audience is doing the work for you because they’re singing them back to you. That’s a really nice, uplifting, free-flowing feeling. Honestly, I could just say we’re a rock and roll band, and that’s it. I guess Cat Empire was a band that really was actively grappling with that for a long time, but at a certain point just decided to celebrate it. We’re a living, breaking musical identity crisis, but we’ve managed to find a place in the world that we can all our own, even if we can’t really describe what it is. It’s just something you have to be there for. It’s no surprise that we have always come back to being a live band first and foremost. When people have a good live experience with a band, it’s something transcendental both for the musicians and for the audience. It’s really just about that experience that you have when you’re there together.”
Riebl said he and his bandmates always love coming to Canada.
“It’s always felt like a real home away from home. On our first trip, we already had a bunch of fans because I guess someone had gone to Australia and bootlegged an album because they had this really rare, almost demo-style album of ours that was made in the very early days, and people in the crowd knew all these obscure songs, that we barely remembered how to play. And the room was packed, even though we never had any radio support for them, it was purely by word of mouth. And it worked,” he said.
“And that sort of connection really stays with you forever. And that happened all over Canada as we slowly got over there: people learned about us not by the radio or by anything else but by some friend having gone to Australia and brought back our music. And since then it’s been a happy stomping ground for us. We’ve had really amazing experiences there, I lots of different parts of the country and at some amazing festivals. It’s always a good feeling when we’re in Canada.”
For more information on Canadian tour dates, the new album and other information about The Cat Empire, visit www.thecatempire.com, or their social media platforms.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
SHARE THIS POST:
