Bargain Bin #3 (Catherine Wheel: Happy Days)

I guess this was supposed to be a series of posts in which I detail my delightful 25-cent CD finds, but my posts have been terribly sporadic. Finally, I've come around to blog about an album I found ages ago from one of my favorite bands, Catherine Wheel.

While lumped in with the British shoegaze scene, Catherine Wheel was never quite a shoegaze band. Sure, they had a textured sound with swirling guitars and ethereal melodies, but the Wheel (much like similar band Swervedriver) always leaned towards a more straightforward rock feel. This influence played an increasingly larger role in their sound with each release, culminating in their 1995 album Happy Days. Though the album as a whole sounds right at home within the 90s American alt-rock scene, they do retain a few tools from their shoegazy bag-o'-tricks, churning out a big, solid record that manages to straddle both sides of the pond with great success.

Wheel lets the listener know right away what kind of album Happy Days will be, coming right out of the gate with the explosive opening track "God Inside My Head" before settling into a rhythm of rock-oriented tracks accented by the odd slower/shoegazier song. A nod to the sound of their previous album Chrome and Ferment before it, "Heal" is a good midtempo shoegaze ballad, reminiscent of "Black Metallic."

Ironically, the smoothest, dreamiest track on the album is the most abrasively-named one, "Eat My Dust You Insensitive F**k," showing frontman Rob Dickinson at his vocal best as he beautifully croons the title's lyrics over minimal, atmospheric instrumentation. Dickinson's vocals, a standout feature on all of Catherine Wheel's albums, are smooth enough for the melodic shoegaze sound yet powerful enough to cut through their more metal-tinged ventures ("God Inside My Head," "My Exhibition"). Catherine Wheel's timekeeper Neil Sims contributes another album's worth of consistently great drumming, particularly evidenced in "Hole," as his kinetic drumming powers the drum-centric song, and "Kill My Soul," the closing track. These two songs, in addition to "Eat My Dust," are my favorite songs on the album, and Sims's drumming is probably a significant part of that.

An additional track of note is another song that falls on the more shoegaze-oriented side of the Catherine Wheel spectrum, "Judy Staring at the Sun," featuring backing vocals by Tanya Donelly, adding to the atmospheric feel of the track. Donelly brings a long history of work in legendary alternative bands, as she was a co-founder of Throwing Muses, Belly, AND The Breeders, so this is definitely a very cool thing to hear if you're a fan of any of those bands (and, well, you should be).

Although Catherine Wheel moved towards a more polished hard rock sound for this outing, they certainly retained their familiar sense of melody and all of the other musical qualities that separated them from the rest of the shoegaze pack. If you enjoyed their previous two albums (and don't mind musicians who look up at the crowd every once in a while), despite the odd weak spot that shows itself every now and then over this lengthy album, popping Happy Days into your player should be an overall enjoyable experience.

Tracks:

1. God Inside My Head
2. Waydown
3. Little Muscle
4. Heal
5. Empty Head
6. Receive
7. My Exhibition
8. Eat My Dust You Insensitive Fuck
9. Shocking
10. Love Tips Up
11. Judy Staring at the Sun
12. Hole
13. Fizzy Love
14. Kill My Soul

Check it.