Quiet Achievers: The Cat Empire

29 June 2010

by Jason Treuen

Is The Cat Empire Australia’s most over-looked band? When you consider the figures, they certainly shouldn’t be.

The Melbourne six-piece have sold over half a million albums and DVDs over seven years. All four of their albums – 2003’s self-titled, 2005’s Two Shoes, 2006’s Cities and 2007’s So Many Nights - have sold multi-platinum in Australia. Given their fierce live reputation and fanatical followers, their new album Cinema, released last Friday, will no doubt follow closely in their footsteps.

Yet for all their success, these six lads who cut their teeth in Melbourne’s jazz scene still suffer a certain identity crisis when it comes to Australia’s musical landscape. Like their feline namesake, they’ve remained stealthy, mysterious and at times, bordered on invisible.

Their album sales may be sky-high, but curiously the band have always remained low profile, more likely to be found noodling in Melbourne jazz clubs and jam sessions than on the red carpet or in the social pages. And while they’ve been together for more than a decade, music fans would be hard pressed to name all six members, although they might manage frontmen Felix Riebl and Harry James Angus (for the record, it’s pianist Ollie McGill, saxophonist Ryan Monro, percussionist Will Hull-Brown and percussionist Jamshid Khadiwala).

For all their album sales, astoundingly they’ve won just one ARIA Award – Best World Album for 2006’s Cities LP. They’ve performed at some of the biggest events in the world – the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Glastonbury in England, Bonnaroo in the US, Rock Am Ring in Germany and the Montreal Jazz Festival (to 150,000 people) in Canada – but they’ve never been added to a Big Day Out bill.

So how can a band this big still fly so underneath the radar? After all, they’ve sold a truckload, run rings around the world and boast one of the most passionate fanbases a band could ask for (one recently shelled out $200 for an advance copy of their new album).

Jazz, funk and hip hop have always had a hard time in the Australian mainstream so when a band like The Cat Empire make a career combining all three, they’re going to be swimming against the mainstream current. And in the past, their flamboyant musicality and energetic live shows have seen them dismissed for many things - being too eccentric, too eclectic, too muso, too Melbourne.

“I guess it’s always going to be hard to describe a band that doesn’t have guitars, that can play both a jazz club and a rock festival and hold its own,” ponders Riebl. “We’ve never really attempted to fit into any real demographic.”

Which, of course, is going to be a problem when it comes to commercial radio. While the band have enjoyed support from Triple J and community stations, their genre-bending has seen them fall through the cracks of commercial radio and right into the too hard basket.

“A lot of [commercial] radio programmers tell me The Cat Empire are a great live band but they just don’t sound right on the radio,” explains Darryl Bailey, EMI’s Director of Promotions and Publicity. “They find them polarising in the music context of the station. Next to Lady Gaga or David Guetta, they say they just don’t sound quite right and that’s all they’re looking at.”

But it wasn’t always the way. Back in 2003, when The Cat Empire released their first single, the highly-contagious Hello, commercial radio was all over it but the love didn’t last long.

“With Hello, we got a massive response back straight away and we had Triple J, Nova and the Today Network all jump on board,” recalls Bailey. “But it didn’t test well at Today and that was kinda the last hurrah for them. They’ve never really gone back.”

According to Scott Baker-Smith, Music Director and Assistant Content Director at Austereo’s FOX FM, the band just haven’t clicked with listeners.

“We’re a suburban mainstream hit music station and Cat Empire fall outside of that,” he says. “Our stations are driven on audience research and feedback and our audience have not been as passionate about their songs, as other EMI artists. Putting it simply, their songs have not felt instant for our format.”

Not that it’s really ever mattered to Riebl. Like a true muso, his main metric for the band’s success has always been the band’s live show and fans have always been more important than anonymous test audiences.

“All the achievements have been associated with that because we first came together as a live band,” he explains.

“The band have generated a really great word of mouth following. We’ve been to places around the world where we can play really big shows and we’ve done that without radio support. I’m very proud of that.”

But being Australian music’s outsider did take its toll. In April 2008, cofrontman Angus left the band (albeit temporarily), exhausted from touring and upset with how the band was perceived.

“It’s difficult to be perceived as cool or even relevant in modern music when you’re playing joyful music,’’ Angus told The Age recently. ‘’There have been times when I’ve really listened to the critics of the band… it made me feel like what we were doing didn’t have any worth. They’d say we’re annoying and trite. And I listened.”

After a year hiatus, the band regrouped last August for a European tour and came back re-inspired after playing the largest audiences there to date. They started writing the album in November and recorded it by February with producer Steven Schram (Little Birdy, Little Red).

While it probably won’t win over FOX FM listeners, Cinema does boast a subtle new step in the band’s evolution. To non-fans, it might sound like a typical Cat Empire record with its horns and party jams, but delving deeper, songs like Falling, Waiting and the dreamy Only Light display a new-found sense of confidence, melody and perhaps most importantly, fun.

“I was just enjoying what the band is and trying to write songs that are going to be fun to play on big stages and the guys would enjoying playing,” Riebl explains. “We weren’t so protective of the songs this time. It’s a strong, consistent album. We’re looking forward to playing it on stage.”

Cinema also heralds a new era and a new mindset for The Cat Empire. After teetering on the edge of a break up two years ago, they’ve agreed to take a collective breath and just enjoy the ride and where it takes them.

“We’ve decided that now when we decide to tour, we’re all going to be in the right frame of mind to deliver that show,” says Riebl. “I don’t see an end to the Empire, but I don’t see us doing what it did to get to here, which is tour back to back.”

That being said, July sees them heading to 15-date North American before returning for a comprehensive jaunt around Australia. Then in October, they jet over to Europe and the UK.

“I view the band as this amazing travelling experience, both literally and musically,” says Riebl. “It’s not the centre of my universe anymore and in some ways we’ve achieved everything I’ve always hoped we’d achieve. Now I’m just happy to be a part of it.

“I think part of touring this album will just be stepping back and enjoying being on stage, our success and our fans, who keep coming to our shows.”