Peter Cat Recording Co – Beta

This one came highly recommended, which is often the kiss of death. This Indian alt-rock band is fronted by a crooner who would have been at home in the 1950s sharing sessions with the rat pack. His sense of melody and some of the schmaltzy arrangement style is taken from that era. I was reminded of Richard Swift’s little-known EP The Novelist (a lovely bit of period pastiche) but there’s no way you could mistake this for a newly-discovered archaeological find. Elements of indie rock, Bollywood samples and electronic dance music are incorporated throughout, displacing aspects of jazz sophistication which unfortunately, for me, they do not make up for. I found myself missing the confident swing and harmonic richness that Sinatra would have lavished on this material. The strong melodies are let down by some irritating arrangement choices: murky chord voicings, ambient noise tracks, generally quite vague rhythm guitar. The Seed’s verse melody reminded me of the Kooks’ She Moves in Her Own Way, and of course it’s different music with different aims but when I put the mid-00s pop song on for comparison, I was astonished at how much clearer and more focussed its production was.
Control Room is a marvellous track where everything I’ve just been complaining about works really well, which goes to show that there’s no right or wrong in any of this (or rather, there is only right or wrong in all of this). Black & White is a great EDM-influenced track with some tasty bass. A beautiful Life’s opens with a sparse arrangement which I loved so much I was a little disappointed when the guitar and synth came in. What a bold, brilliant move it would have been to close the album with just the plucky bass, minimal tambourine and seductive sax backing the lovely crooner. Or would that have been too “jazz”?

5/10