There is something very remotely Kim Gordon about this record. And perhaps it’s not overt, and perhaps it isn’t always noticeable, but it’s there – if only for a second or two towards the beginning of track seven ‘Thin Skinned’. It exists. There’s something gutsy, unpolished about the record, something beneath that spacey, detached outer layer that really does seem to know what it’s doing with a pressed, gritty confidence.
I know it’s a stretch. After a few sludgy notes to open, the first half of the album seems to be devoted to an ambient, dream-world sort of experience. No angsty, acerbic riffs to help press on through the five-and-a-half-minute experimental phases, no technical melodies to stun you into captivation. But then it is trip-hop. It might not fill the room, but it certainly paints it a different colour.
And I like all that. Light vocals juxtapose quite dark borderline-psychedelic instrumentals, and just as you’re sure it’s about to drop into a heavy metal verse or something a bit mad, it all lightens up and starts over with a brush of glitter. Even some of the harsher aspects begin to smoosh into part of this quite benign proto-catatonic arrangement by the middle, but that brings me back to Sonic Youth.
You’re not going to hit play and hear Goo. But past track track five, the album becomes a little more deliberate, a little more placed, as opposed to spread. By accentuating some of the core strengths of the album – most notably the vocals – the band manages to tear away the cushioning effect of fuzzy atmospherics in order to stress more clearly some of the horror – if you like – that’s been built around the backbone of this album.
A Taste of Heaven is a gradual evolution through a wide range of sounds – some familiar and some not so much, from whatever it was that made Dido work to the dream-pop of Blonde Redhead. Over the course of 46 minutes, Cats Park make a marked transition from interesting new act (if only for the noises it seems to emulate) to one to watch for its stylistic attentiveness as a fascinating new band in its own right.
Words by James Reynolds