Just a joke about "cat" and "cheetah"

[koganbot]

Here's my Battle Of Mice review for the long lost Paper Thin Walls.

BATTLE OF MICE "Sleep And Dream"
from A Day Of Nights (Neurot)
Bloody Nursery Metal // Out October 31, 2006
7.0

Eris (or Discordia) brought an apple but didn't say who it was for, so Aphrodite (or Venus), who felt she deserved it, told Paris he could have whoever he wanted so he took Helen, which made Nicole jealous and therefore the Greeks had to go fight wars in whatever country the Trojans lived in. They pitched tents and sulked, and Raven-Someone said that Paris couldn't sing and he said he could but switched to guitar, causing the great Alexander to refer to the whole thing as "a battle of mice," hence the title of our story. Festivities resumed in Austin at SXSLOLxxx where a troop of Red Sparowes confronted Made Out Of Cheetah Babies, and Paris the guitar player who now called himself Josh (or Adrienne) and Raven-Someone the singer who called herself Julie (or Nicole) absolutely could not stand each other, so they fell in love, and nature taking its course, the two formed a band, with Tony formerly of Pere Ubu and Joel of Book Of Knots to round out the quartet. In their creative passion Josh (or Adrienne) and Raven-Someone (known as Nicole, or Julie) reaffirmed their initial strong dislike of each other and Tony fled the recording session, and somebody "fell" down the stairs, and Raven-Someone wouldn't perform with the Battle Of Cheetah Babies or maybe she would, since according to Adrienne once a miceling always a miceling and this had nothing to do with why she was no longer Alana. "The whole 'catfight' thing was just a joke about 'cat' and 'cheetah.' Get it? 'Cat'? 'Cheetah'? 'Catfight'?" And so they were all friends and went to Barcelona where Josh and Julie couldn't bear to be in the same room together so Josh recorded his guitar parts one day and Julie recorded her vocals on another, because the show must go on and they've been signed to another season.

The Battle Of Mice LP being one of those instances where life and art are so intertwined that to describe one is to describe the other, an account of the music itself would be superfluous (which no doubt is why it was absent from the admirable Battle Of Mice press release, which is what piqued my curiosity in the first place). But superfluity is my motto and my method, so let's get down to it: This starts with portentous planetarium atmospherics, then Julie talks in a small breathy voice that isn't so much a little girl's as one that adults use to recite bedtime stories to children. The tale gets bloody, so Josh lays down giant sheets of rough and glistening guitar, then Julie starts screaming - this is, after all, a rock band. Then she sings, then she goes back to the little-girl voice, then Josh and Tony construct great cliffs of sound and Julie's singing climbs them. This last bit is generically rather than genuinely beautiful, and the little-girl stuff that preceded it isn't as convincing/compelling as the child-like dad hate I was raving about a couple weeks ago in my Jena Kraus review. But in general this track is thrilling and chilling enough for me to understand why the participants want the saga to continue, despite everything.
--FRANK KOGAN, OCTOBER 12, 2006

Comments

The original comment thread

[koganbot]

edcchucky - 6.0:
"In a tiny little cave, a dog is sleeping on its back." No wonder Frank compared this to that other dog song. But yeah, it's not as nearly as good, not so far. And right, this gal's telling a horror bedtime story. Cutesy. With horror guitars attempting to add drama, but really all her voice and the guitars (and oh yeah, the draggy just-you-wait, something's-gonna-jump-you-from-behind drums) are doing are setting a mood. Then she does her Kittie scream, which sounds completely extraneous and, um, doesn't scare me. But then she turns into Siouxsie or somebody and I actually like her voice for a few seconds! Then she starts whispering in a stupid way that's supposed to sound "ominous" or some shit (the usual shit - you know, like those whispery Ying Yang Twins and David Banner songs that wish they were released on Wax Trax), and she's really irritating me. She builds back up to the Siouxsie vibrato, which again, is fairly strong, and I realize the track is basically about the journey of her voice. Outside of the very beginning when they're trying to set that eerie mood, her band really doesn't do a hell whole of a lot. Nice rennaisance angel voices cooing from on-high at the end, though.

edcchucky - 6.0:
PS) The dog story didn't hold my attention, either.

edcchucky - 6.0:
Also I was joking, needless to say, about the Ying Yang Banner comparison. Really who her whisper schtick in that one (thankfully brief) part of the song brings to mind is that song from the '90s where PJ Harvey kept getting hushy about "little fishies swimming in the water" or whatever it was. Which was one of the most annoying moments in '90s music, hands down. So I'm probably underrating this song a little, given that a small portion of it reminds me of something I despised so much. The Battle of Mice track does seem ambitious, which is a good thing. And their singer does seem versatile, which I definitely respect. So maybe this is worth 6.25 or 6.33333 instead.

beguapo - 6.5:
the Siouxsie moment is really the best. agree the music isn't helping her much, tries to stay too much out of the way. but (and now i'm just aping chuck) the ambition is nice to see these days, must admit.

WhineyPTW:
It's not as good as the dog story in Devo's "Freedom Of Choice" either.

I'm really indifferent to Battle Of Mice, which is odd considering how much I LOVE the new Made Out Of Babies. I guess these Neurotty bands (Red Sparowes included) really revel in the push and pull. But the crescendos are starting to sound like the nerd equivalant of the most part in an NYHC song. Meanwhile, MOoB is ALL push! And Julie's voice is best when it's doing big swoops not little swoops (ie, PJ Harvey comparision = dead on).

She's really filling the Diamanda void for me now that my beloved Aqui broke up.

edcchucky - 6.0:
these Neurotty bands (Red Sparowes included) really revel in the push and pull.

Red Sparrowes sound to me like metalgaze (as Decibel calls it) with all the metal taken out. zzzzzzzzzz - And not in a good way.

edcchucky - 6.0:
Wait, I just remembered that Decibel gave this band's album 10 out of 10! I hadn't even made the connection 'til now. What a wacky magazine.

koganbot:
Maybe I'm just a sucker for the bedtime nightmare story, though I think as a kid I liked them as sea stories with dark ships and pirates and hidden caves. Very eerie. Whereas as an adult I ignore the water. Might have preferred Battle of Mice with shanteys chanteys. But I think you guys underrate the sheets of sound.

By the way, I just received the Battle of Mice CD today (my emails to everywhere related to this album kept bouncing), so I can finally discover how the melodrama as a whole fits together, and can find out which version of "Sleep and Dream" is the one on the CD. (There was one on their MySpace and a slightly different one that I downloaded from the BoM Webpage.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Here is what I wrote about the singer's other band, Made Out Of Babies, for Rhapsody last year:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/07/christmas-made-out-of-babies-please-come-home.html