ewe2
12-05-2006, 01:54 PM
The room is spinning from too many drinks
I've drunken by myself
I know that staying here and drinking beer
is no good for my health
What is there left to do,
but to drink and watch the view
I think that it might rain this afternoon.
Too many times, too many times
Too many times, too many times
-- Too Many Times
If you were young in the 1970's-1980's, you'll probably remember Mental As Anything as the goodtime band that didn't take itself seriously, wrote some great singalongs, and made silly video clips. Following in a similar vein to previous albums Cats And Dogs (1982) has great singalongs, great pop and...boring pop. It seems to waver between a suburban pop sensibility and an artschool pop mentality, and frankly I prefer one side literally to the other.
Too Many Times and If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too? are classics of the "kill the inspiration and sing about the grief" beer-selling style where alcoholic youth describe their ineptitude in personal relationships by singing along and falling down. Walking On Rails and Got Hit are more standard Mentals country-pop fare, good songs, but wouldn't have been out of place on earlier albums.
The surprises are Berserk Warriors and Let's Cook. They're both gorgeous pop, infectious and brilliantly produced. Warriors has a marching motif that weaves in and out of the song until the final hypnotic riff complete with chanting vikings in an ode to ABBA, the echoey production giving it a haunting feel. Let's Cook is my personal favorite of Peter O'Doherty's bass work, bouncy pop that affects casualness, but the dotty bass that never repeats itself, the bright organ stabs and sharp guitar riffs say otherwise, another classic by Mombassa.
Sadly I cannot say very much about the last six songs, mostly the work of Peter O'Doherty assisted by brother Reg. I'm sure someone loves these, so I'm not totally dissing the album, but I've had it for 20+ years and I still don't remember any of them. To me, they're just forgettable: despite some good lyrics, the music just isn't up to Mentals scratch and I'm still wondering why they just put such filler in. I'm sure the O'Doherty brothers were using the album as an opportunity to record less commercially-driven work, but it still shortchanges the fans. Certainly it was good enough to attract Elvis Costello's attention, leading him to produce their next single I Didn't Mean To Be Mean after Let's Cook, which ruled the airwaves after Berserk Warriors.
In fact Cats And Dogs can be seen as an album with a commercial side and a non-commercial side, ie singles and filler, since two of the songs were released in the year preceding the album and one after it. This, from an industry point of view, was uncommon for the time, depressingly familiar now. But for what it is, it's still a worthy purchase unless you can get the first six songs on a compilation.
I've drunken by myself
I know that staying here and drinking beer
is no good for my health
What is there left to do,
but to drink and watch the view
I think that it might rain this afternoon.
Too many times, too many times
Too many times, too many times
-- Too Many Times
If you were young in the 1970's-1980's, you'll probably remember Mental As Anything as the goodtime band that didn't take itself seriously, wrote some great singalongs, and made silly video clips. Following in a similar vein to previous albums Cats And Dogs (1982) has great singalongs, great pop and...boring pop. It seems to waver between a suburban pop sensibility and an artschool pop mentality, and frankly I prefer one side literally to the other.
Too Many Times and If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too? are classics of the "kill the inspiration and sing about the grief" beer-selling style where alcoholic youth describe their ineptitude in personal relationships by singing along and falling down. Walking On Rails and Got Hit are more standard Mentals country-pop fare, good songs, but wouldn't have been out of place on earlier albums.
The surprises are Berserk Warriors and Let's Cook. They're both gorgeous pop, infectious and brilliantly produced. Warriors has a marching motif that weaves in and out of the song until the final hypnotic riff complete with chanting vikings in an ode to ABBA, the echoey production giving it a haunting feel. Let's Cook is my personal favorite of Peter O'Doherty's bass work, bouncy pop that affects casualness, but the dotty bass that never repeats itself, the bright organ stabs and sharp guitar riffs say otherwise, another classic by Mombassa.
Sadly I cannot say very much about the last six songs, mostly the work of Peter O'Doherty assisted by brother Reg. I'm sure someone loves these, so I'm not totally dissing the album, but I've had it for 20+ years and I still don't remember any of them. To me, they're just forgettable: despite some good lyrics, the music just isn't up to Mentals scratch and I'm still wondering why they just put such filler in. I'm sure the O'Doherty brothers were using the album as an opportunity to record less commercially-driven work, but it still shortchanges the fans. Certainly it was good enough to attract Elvis Costello's attention, leading him to produce their next single I Didn't Mean To Be Mean after Let's Cook, which ruled the airwaves after Berserk Warriors.
In fact Cats And Dogs can be seen as an album with a commercial side and a non-commercial side, ie singles and filler, since two of the songs were released in the year preceding the album and one after it. This, from an industry point of view, was uncommon for the time, depressingly familiar now. But for what it is, it's still a worthy purchase unless you can get the first six songs on a compilation.