The latest of Brighton’s bigbands to release an album, Town of Cats are well-known for their raucous live shows, where upwards of ten members cram onstage, turning venues into seething dance-pits. As with any large band, the difficulty come recording day is transferring their huge sound clearly onto record, and tailoring a sound meant to be heard live to one that’s enjoyable on your walk to work. Happily for Town of Cats, they had no trouble whatsoever, as someone who’s seen them live would know, their work on this album is astonishing, completely transforming their sound.

The opening track ‘Bastards’ is par for the course with Town of Cats: the Latin horns swagger, the funk and ska-laden drums roll, while lead singer Joe Travis-Dean raps and sings over the top in a politically-charged tirade, covering Brexit, austerity, the NHS, immigration, city fat-cats, and more. Its energy, tone and musicianship are everything you can expect from a TOC concert, plus it’s beautifully recorded, everything coming out crystal clear and balanced. So far, so Town of Cats – but then cue the first bluesy notes of ‘Climbing Trees’, a complete change of tone with its gospel backing vocals and burning-hot flute. It’s as if the band set you up with the first track, just to knock down your expectations of the album with the second. It’s one where they sit back and really show off, letting the solos rip towards the end with an ascendant sax solo and a seamless transition to a blinder from the organ.

The band return to form with ‘King of the Jungle’, rap-funk at its best with all the power of the brass section behind it. Whoever writes the horns parts deserves a pat on the back: they’re always unexpected where they could be obvious. In fact this is true of the songwriting throughout the album. This song, for example, features a drop to a jazzy walking bassline before a hard-hitting horns blast blows the jazz away. It’s not the last song to chop and change the style in a way that makes you stop, forcing you to pay attention to the band’s tricks and turns.

More jazz influences break through the heavy gypsy-swing sound of ‘The Demon’ in the brass solos. It’s an unusual track in that it’s full of space; it’s nice that a band with so many members has little enough ego to drop to just guitar, drums and vocals. In this one, as in ‘Don’t Listen’, Travis-Dean’s performance really comes through. His lyrics are playful, smart and vibrant, while his delivery is exceptional. He packs rhymes into the verse with huge amounts of organic rhythm, rather than sticking to a simple rhyme scheme, and flow-changes liberally.

‘Mr. 100’ is the heaviest song on the album, holding elements of metal in its calamitous opening, before returning to Latin funk and jazz. Often throughout the album the band will place the funk next to the jazz, the dramatic next to the serene. It’s another example of their range, and their use of contrast to make songs that both surprise and satisfy.

As a general rule for this album, expect the unexpected. Don’t look for the live sound – the live band we know is still in there, but they sound completely different on the album: cleaner, more polished, more professional. This all throws the quality of their songwriting, as well as their musicianship, into sharp relief. None of this would be possible if it wasn’t recorded and mixed to perfection. The real surprise though comes in that it’s as suited to a bus journey as it is to a house party.
Ben Noble

Website: townofcats.co.uk
Facebook: facebook.com/townofcats
Twitter: twitter.com/townofcatsband