Album
Catholic Action
In Memory Of
October 20 2017 (Modern Sky)
6.5/10
Words: Richard O'Hagan
You know how, as a rule, the working week starts off being pretty pants when you wake up on Monday morning and then gradually improves until you reach the glorious moment of going home time on Friday? Well, this record, the debut from Glaswegians Catholic Action, is pretty much like that in reverse.
It starts off brilliantly, as frontman Chris McCory gets into describing some interesting evening entertainment over the almost psychobilly rhythm of ‘L.U.V.’. We then get treated to the brief but somewhat insubstantial musings of current single ‘Propaganda’, before hitting the meaty, midweeky, element that is tracks four to seven.
‘Black & White’ is, frankly, superb, an unexpected Wednesday afternoon of a track, full of the sort of soaring melodies that give 6Music producers illicit orgasms behind the bike sheds. That’s followed by former single ‘Breakfast’, which just emphasises that Catholic Action are much better when they stop trying to be too quirky and just get on with it.
That said, ‘New Year’ is a track that’s a little bit different. It’s a sort of break-up song which sounds a bit like early 1980s bands trying too hard to be Slade. In which respects it is rather nicely disarming. At which point you are thinking that all this is rather good. McCory has done his usual solid job behind the controls (he has previously produced the likes of Palm Honey), with Fat White Family producer Margo Broom there to provide some balance too. But then it all goes a bit wrong.
Quite bluntly, if the last three tracks of this album were a weekday, they’d be a wet winter Sunday in the Scottish Highlands, trapped in a bothy with a staunch Presbyterian family, with nothing to read but the Bible and absolutely no alcohol allowed. The music just goes meandering off all over the place, with no real intent, no hooks, no nothing. It is a savage disappointment at the end of what was quite a promising debut.
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