Sweet Catatonia: The wonder and brilliance of one of Wales’ most enduring bands

Stephen Price

Judging by the lack of online chatter, a compilation featuring Catatonia’s albums and rarities was released to little fanfare in the middle of last year.

The comprehensive 5CD clamshell box set Make Hay Not War brings together the celebrated band’s four studio albums plus much of their related bonus material, B-sides, mixes, etc.

The box set covers an incredibly productive and successful spell when signed to Warner subsidiary Blanco y Negro Records, from 1996 to 2001.

I know that I could never

Fall from grace I’m far too clever

Paradise is close at hand

CD1 features the band’s debut album ‘Way Beyond Blue’, released in September 1996. It peaked at #32 in the UK album charts, over time achieving Gold status.

Four singles were taken from the album, with ‘You’ve Got A Lot To Answer For’ giving the band their first Top 40 chart entry.

CD2 features the 12 tracks of the band’s triple Platinum # 1 album, ‘International Velvet’.

Originally released in February 1998, five singles were taken from the album, with ‘Mulder And Scully’ and the infectious ‘Road Rage’ charting at three and five in the singles charts respectively.

This album saw them crossover from alternative rock band to mainstream success. This CD includes the radio edit of ‘Road Rage’ plus eight related B-sides from the singles.

Gwledd o fedd gynhyrfodd Cymraes swil

Darganfyddais gwir baradwys Rhyl

CD3 is the band’s third album, ‘Equally Cursed And Blessed’, released in April 1999. The album includes the Top Ten hit, ‘Dead From The Waist Down’, with both the album and radio edit versions.

There’s one missing track here that is as annoying as it gets for completists like me, but I have my theories as to why it didn’t make the cut.

CD4 focuses on the band’s fourth and final studio album, ‘Paper Scissors Stone’ from August 2001. The album peaked at #6 in the album charts.

CD5 gathers together various remixes, mixes, live tracks and the demos for the ‘Paper Scissors Stone’ album. Included are ‘All Girls Are Fly (Da-De? Remix)’, ‘Blow The Millennium Blow (Splott Remix)’, the radio edit of ‘Strange Glue’, Stephen Street’s mix of ‘Bleed’ and the hidden track from ‘Way Beyond Blue’, ‘Gyda Gwen’.

There’s also a unique insight with the inclusion of some of the demos of the ‘Paper Scissors Stone’ album including the single, ‘Stone By Stone’ which appear on CD for the first time.

I log on for company

My ISP comforts me

This package includes card wallets of each of the band’s original album covers, a 32 page CD booklet including a discography and sleeve notes written by respected journalist Nigel Williamson.

Catatonia’s material has a lasting quality and honesty that ensures the band’s music remains very relevant today as was perfectly summed up by BBC DJ, Huw Stephens “They were not just a throwaway pop band – they had real, meaningful songs.”

To struggle would be meaningless

Growing up in a post-industrial Welsh valleys town, Catatonia was the first Welsh band that grabbed my attention, standing in stark contrast to the Anglo-centric airwaves.

Lazily labelled ‘Britpop’, and lost in a sea of Cool Cymru cliche, ‘sexiest woman in pop’ rot, and sensationalist tabloid headlines when cruelty, ‘a source said’, and invasion of privacy was par for the course, Catatonia’s brilliance was often completely overlooked.

Though ill advised and ill in debt

I’d never be drained or misled

As a new Welsh speaker, studying GCSE Welsh at the time, Catatonia offered a first dip of the toe into a whole new world of Welsh literature, performers and idioms, and also (at least in my case) reflected much of my own world view, ways of speaking, ways of seeing the world, out in the mainstream.

The airwaves, dominated by American and English artists, bent a little for a while, with a surge of Welsh talent gaining a moment in the spotlight, and it was Catatonia that was the most accessible for this lost little gay boy who found familiarity, a desire to lap up all I could, listen to as much Welsh music as I could, and to put my head down and improve my Cymraeg.

It was Catatonia that led me to my love of Elinor Bennett – a living legend if ever there was one – and the legacy of John Thomas, and countless other sown seeds that are with me to this day.

Everything is beautiful

What Catatonia did so well was subversion.

Woven throughout their back catalogue is a truly bleak Welsh humour, a knowledge and love and legacy of Welsh poetry in all its forms, all dressed up in pretty, raw, and timeless pop music.

Forget cliched ‘I love you’, ‘I lost you’ rubbish. Here we have a band that talks about losing all their hair, lost cats on Arthur Street, pregnancy tests, storming Buckingham Palace, addiction, fuel protests, Barry C in Connah’s Quay… It’s all there.

When faced with my demons

I clothe them and feed them

The variation of it all, the musicianship – this isn’t pop or rock or folk by numbers by any means. This is a band that has forged a path that hadn’t and hasn’t yet been forged by anyone within Wales, or without.

Their controversial choice to sing in English and not Welsh (as would have been expected) acted as something of a Trojan Horse and opened a door to Wales and Welshness that closed-minded gatekeepers at the time would never have considered otherwise.

In my case, certainly, they’ve been pivotal in my exploration of Welsh culture, language, pride – and even independence.

Thoroughbred Welsh music in every sense, their gamble paid off, and keeps paying off to this day.

The lyrics are as close to a bottled Welshness in English I can think of. Pure poetry.

The Mob

Of course they’re not alone, but along with Super Furry Animals and others, Catatonia ‘have a lot to answer for’ with the defiance in current Welsh language music.

The door needed a forceful opening for the world to take note, and Cerys Matthews has since spent her career exploring Welsh folk music and giving leg-ups to Welsh and world music like few others out there.

And no mention of Catatonia’s back catalogue would be complete without particular praise for that voice. That voice.

This new collection is a reset. A chance for a reappraisal of a band that made poetry into pop and pop into art. Art that lives on and sounds as fresh today as it did the day we were first beautifully blessed.

Over land over sea

One step two to Ynys Free

A reunion seems highly unlikely, but we can all live in hope – especially if the box set’s title suggests a laying down of arms.

Or maybe we just need to be grateful that we were there then, and that we can still go back at the touch of a button.

Either way, this box set is a must.

Listen to Catatonia on Spotify.