Mr Cat & the Jackal: Sins and Siren Songs (Independent)
Think Gogol Bordello meets the Tiger Lilies with a touch of Beirut and you will have a fair idea of the wacky world sound of Mr Cat and the Jackal.
More specifically, Sins and Siren Songs is an eclectic amalgamation of Gypsy sound, piratical verve and folkish whimsy — and all this at the same time as sounding thoroughly modern in a nomadic, globalised kind of way.
Instruments include the bouzouki, accordion and glockenspiel, so it is basically your average over-achieving musical prodigies bringing some danceable joy to the world. Mr Cat is a five-piece and, to add to the pavement-special sound, the band members all appear to be Afrikaans boys channelling Eastern European troubadours and/or blues singers.
There’s a moment of true immigrant verisimilitude in the grammatical error that haunts Where’s My Shoes. It becomes a little painful when it’s built into the chorus but the song itself is so wonderfully maudlin that you end up seduced by the histrionics.
Cultural chorus
I’m equally forgiving of Mother Tongue‘s rickety “There are forces of great danger that’s [sic] been driven by anger”, since the song is delivered in the camp manner of Freddie Mercury trying to piss off Diamanda Galas. The chorus cleverly pre-empts my criticism anyway: “How long before they cut out your mother tongue/my moeder tong”.
The song does appear to be one of those paranoid “they’re coming to kill my culture” ditties we’re becoming used to but, hey, it’s still a pretty song and Mr Cat owns it.
So it’s all a little ramshackle but wonderfully appealing.