What do you think is going to happen if you move to a strange country with nothing but a bag of clothes and a cheeky grand in your pocket?
Well, if you’re anything like the two Toronto boys from Cat The Dog, you’ll worry about the consequences tomorrow and buy every Tom, Dick and Harry a pint in the hope that you’ll stumble upon the finest musicians in the land and get a record deal.
“We went into the unknown and we lost our minds when we came here”
/blockquote>Funny how things work out.
Singer and guitarist Chris Mellion and drummer Andy Newton crossed the waters three years ago and made their way from the bright city lights of Manchester and London to the fish and chip laden beaches of Brighton, where they now call home.
Their $1,000 each lasted only three weeks and the duo spent many a night on a park bench or huddled next to cemetery grave stones, still searching for the rest of a band to create their raw and edgy pop rock first borne in high school – or out of high school as the case may be, as the friends were expelled and passed the time jamming in a basement.
Their persistence paid off and guitarist Darryl Pruess and bass player Dan Logan joined them. First single ‘Romantic’ is gritty and catchy; poppy in its form but with raw, jagged guitars, sweat-inducing drumming and Chris’ screechy, punk vocals.
“The single is an angry ‘I love you’,” the singer said while being spooked by a floating woman in a haunted recording studio somewhere in an eerie corner of Reading. “‘Romantic’ is one of the most exciting songs, it really makes an impact. It’s a garage sound like a load of kids playing in a bedroom, which is what we wanted – something as raw and as loud as we could.”
“The album is a journey for us. Our music can be heavy, but it’s up and down with songs about love and feeling on top of the world.”
“We have used the journey we have been on in the last three years. Me and Andy got into some trouble in school because we were bored, which is why we left to start a band. We wanted to fucking live. Our experiences have definitely twisted our lives. We went into the unknown and we lost our minds when we came here – we knew no one and had no idea what we were doing. I couldn’t help but write about it.”
And now the band, all aged around 21, is putting the finishing touches to next year’s debut album release. It promises to be overflowing with more ‘in your face’ rock rumbles, influenced by teenaged years in curtain-clad bedrooms listening to Beatles and Beach Boys, New York Dolls and Television, as well as Chris’ new ritual of 20 minutes of Bach every morning.
But if the single is anything to go by, those 60s-psyche inspirations may be slightly overshadowed by the desire to create something more edgy, spiky, deafening and something that fits snugly into the indie rock of tomorrow.
