Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Homage To Catatonia

• Stuart Bailie
• 13 Nov 07, 08:22 PM

Last time I was with Cerys Matthews she was smoking a fat one, watching a Kevin McAleer video and squawking with mirth. It was the early days of Catatonia and we were driving from her crashpad in Cardiff to Holyhead and the ferry to Dublin.

The event was In The City, 1996 and we shared the Irish crossing with Feeder and some other bands I΅―ve long since forgotten about. My NME brief was to watch Catatonia on the rise, launching a top single called ΅®You΅―ve Got A lot To Answer For΅― and a peppy first album. The Cerys voice was fantastically out of time and context, so writers were vainly comparing her to Shirley Bassey or even Eartha Kitt. Whatever, it had drama and humour and more.

The band was terribly off-balance though, as Mark wrote the songs, used to date Cerys, and seemed to resent her acclaim. And so my interview was like a Relate session between frosty ex-lovers. You could see where the band would fracture and in the coming years, when the band hit the pop universe like a bug splatting on a windscreen, the singer΅―s distress was evident.

Since then she΅―s retreated to the wilds of America, made a couple of decent albums and re-approached fame with some trepidation. Now I see she΅―s on ΅®I΅―m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here΅―, jumping out of a helicopter on a bungee rope.

Has she learnt nothing?

Stu Bailie presents The Late show on Radio Ulster, every Friday from 10pm until midnight. See his playlist here.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |