There’s two things that I’ve always been good at. One is dreaming, and I often think that maybe now that I’m a proper grown up, with children and everything, I’m possibly too old for dreaming, but I don’t seem to be able to stop. So every time I kick a ball it’s Wembley and I’m Gary Lineker (note to self: I need to update my cultural influences) and every time I put a record on, I’m DJ-ing somewhere. You know the sort of thing. The other thing I’m good at is Pop. I virtually ignored in pub quizzery until the Pop music round comes along. I’m the annoying person that names tunes just from the bassline outside nightclubs, and fires obscure pop questions (who played the harmonica solo on The Eurythmics ‘there must be an angel’?) every time songs come on the radio. So dream-pop is just about my idea of heaven.
Xavier Bacash & Lionel Towers, two DJ’s from Melbourne, Australia (yeah I know it’s obvious, but I’m one of the very few people in the world that immediately think of the small village in Derbyshire when Melbourne is mentioned) formed Gypsy & The Cat in 2010, releasing their album ‘Galgamesh’ that November. Australian radio station Triple J quickly picked up on it, and they were joined by the good and the great (including Mark Ronson) as the world quickly began to take notice of them.
They’ve toured all around their home country, with Kylie Minogue no less, and Europe (they were based in London for a number of months) as well as Hong Kong. By mid 2012, the debut record had sold almost a quarter of a million copies. Now out is the follow-up, The Late Blue, available here
The boys have just released the video to the second single from The Late Blue, It’s a fine line. It’s colourful and beautiful and weird and trippy. Which is, quite succinctly, the story of the single as well. Even though there are the obligatory synth sounds prelevent, it’s actually a more formulaic indie-pop sound that dominates. It’s, frankly, gorgeous.
The album as a whole lands on the same sort of planet as Empire of the Sun/Ladyhawke with a bit of The XX thrown in for good measure. Tracks such as Zombie World and Soul Kiss are totally soaked through with dreamy-pop (of the like I can relate to so well), while Bloom and only in December in particular, raid from the indie-rock camp. What isn’t in doubt is that this second album from Gypsy and the Cat is worthy of close attention.
If you weren’t a dreamer before, come join the gang. Oh, and it’s Stevie Wonder, you know the harmonica thing. But you’d know that, right?
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http://gypsyandthecat.com/
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