The Catherine Wheel have always been one of those bands who sound as if they should be bigger than they are. Craftsmen of music so huge and enigmatically desolate have in the past been more used to playing Wembley Stadium than London's Scala, yet The Catherine Wheel have never really courted mass appeal.
With their fifth album 'Wishville' Great Yarmouth's finest continue doing what they do best. There is an over-riding mood of vast, uncharted ambition running through the core of these songs, as well as an inescapable sense of a bleakness as desolate as the band's home town on a wet Tuesday afternoon in February.
It is this resolutely chart-unfriendly style which is at the root of their lack of commercial success. Big rock songs just do not sell like they used to. At its best 'Wishville' recalls the finest hours of Psychedelic Furs and Mancunian goth heroes The Chameleons and at its worst, the pomp stadium rock of Simple Minds.
Either way the kids are not interested in big rock songs these days unless they are performed by comedians wearing ridiculous vomit soaked rubber masks and bright red petrol pump attendant boiler suits.
Of course The Catherine Wheel's stubborn refusal to pander to musical fashion is part of their charm and it would be a travesty if this album were overlooked as a result. After several listens what initially comes across as a slightly dense, lumbering rock album begins to take on new dimensions. 'Sparks Are Gonna Fly' and 'Lifeline', for example, harbour an intricate multi-layered wall of guitar sound which offers up new musical nuggets upon every listen.
In many ways the album is perfectly paced, for just as the mid tempo fuzzy rock of the early songs gradually leads to slight inertia the gloriously eccentric 'All Of That', with its impulsive meandering melody and sweetly schizophrenic lyrics serves as a perfect wake up call. 'Idle Life' continues the mid-album peak with its strangely powerful, yet brilliantly unhinged melody.
It is not all great of course. 'What We Want To Believe In' teeters too closely on the edge of an AOR abyss to be completely comfortable. Overall, however, 'Wishville' is a solid collection of frequently excellent songs, all of which make perfect sense in the context on this laudably coherent album.
