Review:

on 2011-06-14 CharlesMartel Said:

Catherine Wheel were one of those bands who deserved more recognition than they got. It is an almost perennial feature of the best of British music that this axiom should apply. The band's first two albums were true high points of the early nineties and marked a high point in the shoegaze genre in terms of accessibility and ability. Not for Catherine Wheel the inaccessible droning and hissing of My Bloody Valentine, they were a band who had melodies and lyrics and were not afraid to put either on display. Trouble was that they went rather off the boil when shoegaze began to die a death in the mid nineties. The band was left, like some beached cargo ship, high and dry, without a way forward and unable to go back. For any band that would pose a problem and Catherine Wheel were no exception.

"30th Century Man" was almost prophetic as a single. Coming out around the same time as their first two albums, it lacked the full shoegaze stylistic treatment and seemed to presage a new direction for the band. Whether that new direction would have proved viable is uncertain as the band went down a different path, a path which my musical taste did not really with to follow. "30th Century Man" therefore stands as a testament to what might have been rather than what eventually became.
Rating: 7/10