Back in 2018, Brighton’s Wild Cat Strike released their debut album, Rhubarb Nostalgia, cementing their idiosyncratic niche between between folk, punk and rock. Some reviews positioned them as Brighton’s answer to Mumford and Sons, others as loud and abrasive post-rockers, and while one of these is probably closer to the truth, it’s not difficult to see how the blur between almost sea shanty singalongs and vast walls of distortion led to such diverging views.
Because living up to its name, the record had a folky wistful air, coloured by a sense of creeping loss and longing, though rather than meandering with melancholy it was prone to outbursts of noise too—urgency and desperation spilling over into chaotic swells of guitar. With Max Boughen (guitar) Daniel Byrom (guitar, organ), Joe Caple (drums, percussion) and Chris Whitehorn (bass, organ) sharing the vocals, this chaos was harnessed and set in a common direction, the songs often possessing a sense of communal power that took frustration, confusion and pain and channelled them into something uplifting.
This spring sees the return of Wild Cat Strike with a brand new EP, Mustard Coloured Years. Again on Small Pond, the release develops the band’s aesthetic further, lead single ‘Toothcutter’ offering a brash indie rock dimension to the sound. Still, it’s the urgency and tension in the vocals that make the song, a sense of immediacy placed front and centre in the brooding atmosphere.
Today we’re lucky enough to share the release’s second single, ‘Mustard’. Stripping things back from ‘Toothcutter’, there’s a hesitancy to the opening of the track, though the energy gathers with each tentative step. First within the cadence of the vocals, then the instrumentation itself. Recorded at Echo Zoo Studios in Eastbourne, on a desk allegedly used by David Bowie, the song sees Wild Cat Strike joined by fellow Small Ponders Bonniesongs and Natalie Evans, as well as friends from Tall Ships and I Feel Fine, lending the track a collective feel and imbuing the singalong spirit a real sense of weight and emotion. This is compounded by the thundering collision of guitars and drums in the latter half of the track, a storm from which the vocals emerge, calm and reflective once more.
