"Sound of the Wolf" by Cat Mead
Review
Out now is the single "Sound of the Wolf", Cat Mead's follow-up to the well received "Fantasise With Me" which also adorns ‘Hot Music Live Presents Volume Sixteen'.
Given that Cat has travelled to Warwickshire from as far away as you could conceive of, it's fascinating to hear how she's adopted an idiom of her current base: not only does the song sound as if it's come from the depths of English folk but it has an almost Elizabethan flavour to it: something those used to the Stratford influence are reasonably used to, but one which must have tickled to creative fancy of this recent arrival. It's interesting to hear a fresh take on something we might almost take for granted. There are several Shakespearean plays into which you could plausibly & successfully insert it.
That's also due to the stately & poetic language Cat utilises. I love her explorations of phrasing & vocabulary but also how she adopts more oblique perspectives on her subject matter ("Fantasise With Me" being another fine example). There is little more depressing as a reviewer than ploughing through a morass of platitudes if not outright cliches and clearly Cat has no truck with these: she either woks to swerve round them or perhaps her creative mind just isn't wired for stating the overworked obvious.
Not surprisingly, she is working here via the medium of metaphor and given the imagery which she adopts, the deeply rooted musical structure, the lushness of the layered vocals and the darkness of the tale, it comes across as something the Brothers Grimm might have written to set the scene for one of their tales: one could easily picture Cat singing her song in the depths of a primeval Germanic forest. Well I can at any rate.
Cat Mead is many things as an artist & we are just beginning to learn what some of them are. This is quintessentially classy songwriting & just as its own roots are deep, so it has the qualities to sustain over an equivalent period of time into the future. Aren't we lucky that she's selected here to dwell & play?
Look out for Cat playing alongside other musicians including ‘Hot Music Live Presents' featured favourites Shanade & Jack Blackman on 14th April at Southbound in Leamington
