Hamstrung by the pandemic in the intervening months, Wild Cat Strike looked to continue to work under the new limitations. Luckily, there was something of a precedent, with 2019 release The Blood Orange Sessions being built from acoustic or reworked tracks from the full-length, Rhubarb Nostalgia. After being asked to work on an acoustic show for a Big Scary Monsters project, the band already had some alternate versions of songs from Mustard Coloured Years, and decided to follow the same blueprint. “We were working out a few acoustic arrangements for a BSM pop up shop to play alongside our friends in Delta Sleep and Orchards,” the band explain, “and when lockdown hit and it cancelled, we didn’t stop and just followed this path further.”

The result is Red Brake Light Sky Sessions, a brand new EP that sees Wild Cat Strike swap out the amps and distortion peddles for an array of acoustic instruments. From banjos and violins to marimbas and melodicas, the release reimagines the outfit’s sound while retaining the spirit, a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that the band members were confined to their individual homes for the process. No less inventive or adventurous, the new tracks lose some of the weight and heft of the previous versions yet continue the impassioned, often caustic tone. A sound fitting for our current predicament. Soundscapes reduced and concentrated, left to turn strange behind closed doors. Emotions stripped back to their individual components, still burning all the same.

Today we’re delighted to be able to share ‘Swamp’, the lead single from the release. Where the original flirted with post-rock in its sprawling peaks and troughs, the new version must settle for more modest ripples. When there is no energy to get lost in, no noise to hide behind,  another level of detail emerges. The emotional drive of the track is slowed but not neutered, and in the newfound intimacy Wild Cat Strike bring forth the melancholic nostalgia that has long underpinned their music.

Artwork by Melissa Kitty Jarram

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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.

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