The Family Cat - Magic Happens (c) 1994 Arista
Artist....: The Family Cat
Album.....: Magic Happens
Type......: Album
Source....: CDDA
Tracks....: 12
Genre.....: Indie
Label.....: Arista
Catalogue#: 20466-2
Encoder...: LAME 3.97
Quality...: VBR kbps / 44.1KHz / Joint-Stereo
URL.......: http://www.zenbullets.com/familycat/theband2.html
Tracklist:
----------
01 Wonderful Excuse 02:56
02 Amazing Hangover 04:09
03 Move Over I'll Drive 04:17
04 Your Secrets Will Stay Mine 04:28
05 Airplane Gardens 04:22
06 Gone, So Long 05:05
07 Hamlet For Now 05:14
08 Goldenbook 02:40
09 Rockbreaking 03:38
10 Springing The Atom 04:06
11 Blood Orange 04:20
12 Nowhere To Go But Down 05:19
Total:74,8 MB / 50:34 min
Release Notes:
--------------
From the debut single, "Tom Verlaine," onward -- barring the minor
glitch that was the mini-album Tell 'Em We're Surfin' -- the Family
Cat's work was generally well received by the British music press.
Unfortunately, that enthusiasm never really translated to sales
figures, either at home or abroad. This second album on the Dedicated
label underscores how unlucky the quintet from Yeovil was, never to
achieve any significant commercial success. There's a certain amount of
continuity from the 1992 predecessor, Furthest From the Sun, but Magic
Happens is a more fully realized, polished achievement. This time
around, the band's textured, melodic rock also has a consistently
harder edge. This can be heard not only on driving tracks like the
singalong opener, "Wonderful Excuse," and the charging, explosive
"Airplane Gardens," but also on down-tempo, brooding numbers shot
through with searing guitars: the melancholy power ballad "Your Secrets
Will Stay Mine" and "Amazing Hangover," a song that captures the moody
feel of its title. Although Magic Happens showcases the Family Cat's
knack for variations in intensity and pace from one track to the next,
those shifts are most compelling when they're seamlessly integrated
within the same song. The standout "Move Over I'll Drive," for
instance, swaggers along darkly in 6/8 time, occasionally bursting out
of its quieter, slower spaces, and ultimately gathers momentum to build
to a guitar-fueled climax. The title of the closer, "Nowhere to Go but
Down," was ironically prescient, since this album proved to be the
Family Cat's swan song. While Magic Happens is a fitting epitaph for
one of the better British guitar bands of the period, it inevitably
begs the question: why was this group left watching from the sidelines
as their less-talented guitar-based contemporaries profited from the
Brit-pop explosion of the mid-'90s?
-AllMusic