MetalTalk last spoke to Greg Hart, guitarist and songwriter of melodic rockers Cats In Space in March, towards the end of the Kickstart The Sun promotion, when he stated that was the end of Phase 1 for the band and teased the start of Phase 2. We know now that the big news was that the band have signed to Esoteric Antenna, a division of Cherry Red, and major expansion plans are afoot.
“We’re 28 quid a ticket. You can’t even park your car at The O2 for 28 quid.” Greg Hart has concisely summed up the gulf in costs between the huge concert spectacles and bands on the theatre circuit. The big events will always hold an attraction, of course. However, he is absolutely right that if you are looking for an event that will give you a great experience without breaking the bank, the Cats have it in the bag, their live shows being the best value around.
The reason for going out on tour again is the new album, Time Machine, to be released on 25 October. The album was recorded at Salvation Studios in Brighton, and it sounds lush and layered, which is exactly the premium quality we have come to expect. 2022’s epic Kickstart The Sun raised the already high bar for the band, so there has been speculation on which direction the next album would take, something that was also at the forefront of the band’s mind.
“This album’s definitely been different in a good way,” Greg says. “Obviously, signing to the label put a different slant on how we were going to do things. I think maybe I put myself under a bit of pressure. You want to make an impression, and it’s very important that this album hits all the places that we haven’t hit before, so it’s got to be right.”
Each of the previous albums has had a theme or concept running through it, and Time Machine does, too. It’s not a time-travelling romp. It is more direct and personal, urging us to live for the moment, something that is very clear as soon as you start listening to the album. When Greg and drummer Steevi Bacon got together to begin the writing, this concept came together quickly.
“We said right off the bat here everyone will go it’s obviously going to be Time Machine, H.G. Wells. We’re gonna go into a time machine and go back to the ’70s. Let’s not do any of that. Let’s do the absolute polar opposite of what they think Cats In Space are bound to do.
“I actually had two songs already written. One of them I’ve shelved for now cos it wouldn’t have fitted on the album. Steevi said, ‘I think what we need to do is we need to put a big cuddle round the world and say come on, you’ve got to live for the fact that you’re still here to live.’
“So the positive message that we’re sending out with Time Machine is that you don’t need a time machine, hence why there’s no time machine on the cover. It’s through that portal.”
Cats In Space have a knack of putting out albums that tap into the mood of the time. The music may trigger nostalgia, but right from the start, they have been a band for modern times. In a post-pandemic world where everyone is trying to make sense of where we are now, it hits the spot beautifully.
“This isn’t a down album,” Greg says. “It’s a reflective album because we’ve come out the other side of the biggest load of bollocks the world’s ever seen, in my opinion, and we’ve been left severely damaged. It fucked up so many people.
“I honestly think right now Cats In Space needs to put out a message. The songs are very concise, and they do have a thread of the various states of emotion that we can go through. You can only live now, and it’s a very hard thing to do. I mean, I’m not the world’s most positive character and I find it very hard sometimes to think I’m going to really enjoy today cos today stinks. There’s a couple of ballads on there that are quite deep because they are very simple love songs and Cats In Space don’t really do love songs as such. Maybe it’s time that we should put our hearts on our sleeve a bit.”
No one should entertain any thoughts that the band have changed beyond recognition. Far from it. The album is still classic Cats and the quality of the songwriting, performance and production is as high as ever. Greg states that for comparison purposes Time Machine is probably the sister album to their second album, Scarecrow. “This is a rock album with power ballads if you like.”
Once all the band got together in the studio, the usual Cats magic happened. The band know each other and work together so well, all contributing to getting the songs in shape so there are many highlights on the album as a result. This Velvet Rush stands out as extra special both musically and lyrically, a 1960s vibe starting life influenced by the theme from Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased), so I was keen to know more about that.
“I actually wrote it around the time of Scarecrow, but I didn’t finish it,” Greg says. “I didn’t have the big mid-section that repeats after the solo. I needed another section, and I just left it and kept putting it to one side. Something came up a while ago, and I played this on the piano. I thought, oh my god, I’ve forgotten about this. Something in me automatically went to that section that I didn’t have and in one take, literally in one go, I wrote that section.
“I had some words for it, but I felt the song was so strong that we might miss a trick if we just make this a quirky song. I said to Damien [Edwards, vocalist], I need you to write some new lyrics for this song. Exactly the melody that I’ve done with the other lyrics, but it needs to be a bit more universal. It’s got to be a love song, but it’s got to be a little bit out there. Don’t call it Hold On To Love or anything like that.
“He said, ‘I’ve got this idea for This Velvet Rush.’ I just saw a three-piece velvet suit by Jason King. I loved it. He sang it in one take as he does, and that middle section blew the bloody roof off. It was unbelievable. He literally did that vocal in ten minutes.
“I’ll let you into a secret. I was outside on the phone, and he did it – I wasn’t even there. I came back in, said, sorry about that. He went, ‘I’ve done it when you were on the phone call.’ What?
“They hit play, and I heard our song not knowing what to expect. I was like [drops jaw], so I was a fan. I was a punter. It was brilliant. It’s like nothing we’ve done before.”
As well as eleven new tracks there are some bonuses for the CD release.
Now, there are some albums where you cannot help thinking that the so-called bonuses are an afterthought, a way of using up leftovers by slinging them on to the end to get them out of the way, and they don’t really add anything. Not here, though.
It’s hard to think of a more fitting set of covers for the band to do than No Regrets by The Walker Brothers, How Does It Feel by Slade and Music by John Miles, all fitting seamlessly into the album’s theme. Greg confirms that the tracks are his favourite three tracks of all time.
One of the special guests is renowned pedal steel player BJ Cole, who actually played on the original of No Regrets and reprises his role here. This will be the second Cats album he has appeared on following his guest slot on Kickstart The Sun, and he recorded his part during the sessions for that album as an extra bonus treat.
The other two bonus songs were tracked live during a fan VIP Day earlier in the year, and in the case of Music, this showcases exactly what this band can do live.
“I said, we’re sitting on a song by John Miles that we all know that we can play because we’ve done it in The Supersonic 70s, and Jeff’s done it in one of his bands. I would love to stick it in the tour on certain dates and seriously blow people’s heads off. That was a live version, but it’s got the orchestra and the trumpet added afterwards because we couldn’t physically do it on the day of course.”
Cats In Space are now in their ninth year together, which is not bad going for a band initially put together purely to record some tracks as a side project.
The 2024 version of the band is reaping the benefits of their unique chemistry and are firmly established. “It’s like putting on a pair of comfy slippers,” declares Greg. “I know exactly what Dean’s gonna do, I know exactly what Jeff’s gonna do. Jeff’s a great singer and a brilliant bass player. There’s some very heavy-duty bass playing, and I knew how he would do it.
“I know how Andy’s gonna play. We have been together for 42 years, can you believe? So I know him inside out, and unfortunately, he knows me as well. I worked very closely with Steevi. We did all the demos on this album. This is why this album is different, as normally I would go into the studio, and I would demo with drum machines and bits and bobs, and then the band come in.
“Steevi’s been incredible. He’s just soaked up the information required for us to do the demos ourselves. By the time we took it to the big studio to start doing everything for real, all the groundwork was done. It’s evolved over eight years. I think anybody would be too scared to leave anyway if they wanted to in case they missed out, and we like doing it.
“I don’t think there are many bands that can honestly say each member gets to play how they want to play without being told you can’t do this, can’t do that. We genuinely get on well. We very, very rarely argue, and that’s only over on-the-road stuff when sometimes pressure can get to you a bit or something’s gone wrong. We’re too old to throw our dummies out of the pram anyway. It’s just not worth it.”
With the band now signed to a record label after going it alone up to now, some eyebrows may have been raised initially, considering how, like their feline counterparts, independence and doing things on their own terms was so crucial. Any label would have to share the same vision, strong work ethic and attitude, and it appears that this is all in place.
Greg sounds comfortable and happy with the arrangements and confirms the band will still be selling additional exclusives and special merch directly from their own website and that this phase was always part of the longer-term plan.
“I’ve got a lot in my head I want to get out. So I thought the more albums we do, the harder it’s going to get for our own label to keep doing it because the risk and the worry that we have financially is just backbreaking. We were always told if you keep doing albums and you keep having to do back catalogue and you keep looking to the next album, you need a big pot of money to keep it going.
“My plan was always when we got enough albums in the tin, we should sign to a label and do a deal [including] all our back catalogue that is deleted. But we’re not a heritage band. We’ll keep doing new albums. It’s a win-win with Cherry Red and Vicky and Matt at Esoteric Antenna totally understood that straight away. They put a deal together, I signed the publishing over.
“They’ve got a great PR team, a great in-house network, and they’re old school vinyl people, so all of the boxes – tick, tick, tick, tick. Handing Cats In Space over to someone is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was a big, big decision. It came at the right time, the biggest factor being I need someone that can get our product into Europe because we just can’t do it.”
It does seem like the stars are aligning, especially after I told Greg that the album went out to press a few weeks ago and I saw it land in my inbox on International Cat Day which has got to be an auspicious sign.
For now, the immediate focus is on preparing for the upcoming UK autumn tour in October, followed by some December dates marking the first leg of the Time Machine tour. As with Kickstart The Sun, it’s going to deliver far more than your basic rock show. There will again be visuals and stylings from James Herron at Carriage Return to enhance the show.
Our conversation turns to the challenge of survival for all original bands and what it takes to be innovative and different, something which was presented brilliantly in the For The Love Of It documentary.
“This really does shine a light on the music industry as it is today,” Greg says. “People need to see his documentary to understand this is serious. This isn’t just Cats In Space trying to sell tickets. This is the music industry trying to sell tickets. I understand why nowadays people want to have an experience and see a spectacle like Rammstein or Taylor Swift or whatever. So to go into the O2 in the size of venue where you can put on your Def Leppard type show doesn’t mean that you can sell enough tickets to do it, that’s the problem.
“So what James’s documentary explains is we’re doing a champagne show on lemonade money because we’re trying to say look, we can all do this on a smaller level, but it just needs support.”
James didn’t take a lot of persuading to do it all, again. Greg says he just rang him up and told him he was doing it, and of course, this time round, the previous experience can be built on, streamlining some elements and expanding others. It’s a great role model for bands at this level.
“The Cat Pod’s going to be bigger on the next tour,” Greg says. “Some of those photos from the last tour with Steevi’s drum kit in front of it, that could have been Angel from Long Beach Arena in the ’70s, and that was the dream, that’s what I wanted, it looked the bollocks, you know.
“People need to see this tour to really enjoy seeing something that nobody else is doing. There’s not a band in this country on this level putting on this kind of show in any of the venues that we’re going to. They might have a few lights going up and down. They might have a few fake flames that blow out of little boxes next to the monitors. Some people have projection on a screen behind on a square thing.
“No one’s doing what we’re doing. If you’re in a band, come and see it and you’ll go, we could try something like that. Please do! If we can open the doors up and say this is how you can put a show on, go away and do it, copy us. Because that is giving people more bang for their buck.
“We’re hoping that next year the Time Machine tour will go right the way through because we’ve got to keep it going. We’ve got a rock cruise in Sweden as well, which is the first time we’re going to be getting to the Swedish people, and we’re hoping to get to Europe with the help of the label because that’s the whole point.
“Time Machine will be hopefully a fairly long campaign, and then after that, we will see what’s next.”
And there definitely will be more. Cats In Space have a three-album deal with Cherry Red, and there’s no surprise that Greg is already forming ideas. “The next album might be a full-blown concept. One song. Who knows?”
Cats In Space – Time Machine – Is available to pre-order from here.
