They are one of Australia’s most internationally capped bands, a must see act, a big band extraordinaire, and finally – finally! – the technology has caught up with their stage performance. That’s right, the Cat Empire have released a ‘best of’ double disc of their live performances to be followed, all too appropriately, by a live tour.
According to Empire bassist and cool cat Ryan Monro, the live album is something the band has wanted to do for awhile, but the project only came to fruition when technology became portable enough to record every gig. Over the last two and a half years and hundreds of shows, the Cat Empire worked up enough material to cull into a best album. So, was there a lot of ‘cat’ fighting to decide which tracks made it and which didn’t?
‘Luckily, we have Felix in the band and he works really hard. I think out of everyone, he’s the one who has the patience and the drive and the work ethic to listen to 38 versions of Days Like These and figure out which is the best one. He did a lot of the listening and then sent us some through to choose from, but the bulk of the whittling down happened at his end.’
In the lead-up to the album release, the Cat Empire came together for a few summer festivals, and according to Monro, the band found that they hadn’t lost a beat during their time off.
‘When we started rehearsing again before the festivals, the first song we played, it was just really reassuring that everyone remembered what to do without really having to think about it… It’s a bit of a cliché but it’s like riding a bike, once you know how to do it, you don’t have to think about pushing your foot down and then forward and then the other one doing the same thing while that one comes up. It’s something you have to learn how to do, but then it just becomes second nature.
‘Southbound over in Busselton – that felt like the first gig where we found our feet in the festival season. It was only our third gig back, but that felt like we were really back onto it.’
That’s not to say the whole of the festival season went off without a hitch. As it turns out, there was a rather unfortunate incident with glowsticks.
‘It will go down in history as the year that the crowds threw glow sticks at us,’ said Monro. ‘The whole fluoro revival has been happening since mid-2007, when we went to Splendour in the Grass and we noticed there was a lot of fluoro going on, and that’s been building up and up until finally someone started selling glow sticks at Falls Festival and then they got thrown on stage. They are deadly actually, and you have to keep your wits about you. I saw Felix and Harry have to swerve a few times to avoid the flying glow sticks. For a band with no electro elements whatsoever, it was a bit scary.
‘We were not really sure how to interpret the flying glow sticks, but then I noticed they were throwing them at all the bands, whether they liked them or not. They’d been on their feet drinking and watching bands all day, so maybe by 9.30pm, the only way they could express themselves was by throwing stuff.’
The Cat Empire will strike back with tour dates throughout March – but this time, just leave the glowsticks at home.
Megan Smith
