THE NATIVE CATS - S/T 7inch ( White Denim)

  This Tasmanian two piece start things off with a really dense, straight forward electro sounding electro beat, (not unlike those first shitty beats you made on the Fruityloops demo in '99,and then bragged to your friends about..) A simple and catchy enough bass line rides over top of it.Now It's starting to resemble something out of the early K catalog.It's kind of dark and cutesy, with just a bit of humor.. and doesn't really change at all for the next five minutes.The beat get's so redundant that you actually forget it's there at all once the monotone vocalswagger comes into play.Nothings changed yet.I can't be too sure, due to the vagueness of the few lyrics, but he keeps saying "once i was a little cat's paw, but that didn't last for long.." Which eventually grew on me, but the song lacks any real hooks or anything substantially awesome
to hang on to.A damn shame,too.
  The b-side is a much shorter track called "Lemon Juice" that gave me the same blank vibes as side one..It starts the same as "Catspaw", with a dull-yet-danceable drum machine that just repeats to no end.The semi-catchy bass line starts to do it's thing, and then the lucid, tuneless vocals begin to stumble over their own feet, and we're right back where we started.I will give them props on a spot-on cohesive record, i suppose.It's almost going into that awesomely minimal Young Marble Giants terrain, but the crispy clean production and lack of charm makes it fall pretty short of that.Dag!
I really wanted to like this, too.It's completely not awful, someone out there loves this to bits..just not something I'd come back to.So,if you dig the ultra-minimal, monotone rants-over-simple-electro-beats and bass guitar..this is your new favorite thing.Native Cats have an LP out too, and I really hope it's got more to offer than this single.
MJO