Rescue Cat - What Happened To Us?

Hear The Track Here

One guy speaks to another guy, he speaks to a further guy and so a workload is built (Ed: already he's off). You may remember me blathering on about Alex Highton a while ago, well he's responsible for this new review because he suggested Rescue Cat give me a quick meoowmail and here we all are. Rescue Cat is a solo musician from my part of the world (think, a musician I could actually go and see!) and I'm all for supporting your local artist. With the proviso that they can actually make your toes tap. What Happened To Us is actually slated for a Valentines Day release (what already?, it was just Christmas!) and is a two part release - the other track being Fischer Vs Spassky. Don't run away with the impression that this is a scene soaked in roses and cute red hearts though, unless the roses are dead and the hearts broken.

Aaahh, poor dears.

'Instead of being love songs, they are in fact more like poison pen letters' purrs the Cat, no doubt with a provocative smirk on his whiskers (Ed: Do cats smirk?). What Happened To Us? is a collaboration with (I love this) 'hip hop hating emcee Mikill Pane' This is a sentence that bodes well. Rescue Cat describes himself as an 'electroacoustic' musician and it's a handy description for the musical style. It's actually a couple of tracks mashed up together with traces of electropop, britpop and any other pop thing you can think of. Oh, and a smidge of grime too. Tell you what though, the track is a delight, both to listen to and to take apart and I don't get that pleasure often. I say the same thing to the Cat as I said to Alex Highton: Soundclick, they would eat you right up. After living with this track longer than I should have done, I am completely won over. A beautiful example of modern English pop at its very best.

Fischer Vs Spassky 'compares love to an epic game of chess' and is much more standard electronica, although it's just as pop oriented as What Happened To Us. What it shows me is that Rescue Cat knows what he's about and it shows in every note and tweak I am constantly amazed at the standard of sound and arrangement amongst the unsigned fraternity and people like Alex Highton and - verily - Rescue Cat exemplify just how high that bar is for the rest of us. Fischer Vs Spassky trades heavily on 1980's electropop but bringing it bang up to date. So if you like Soundclick artist Wake Of Destruction's work, here's the other side of the coin. Both of these tracks deserve the widest exposure and airplay but this being the real world I suspect that this is a distant hope. If however you want you listen to some of the finest English pop, it's right here in these two superlative tracks.

MUST HAVE and MUST HAVE (It's twins, Mrs Cat!!)