It’s no secret that we here at Sentinel Daily have long held UK pomp rock exponents Cats In Space in high regard; Indeed, we were one of the first non-British media outlets to champion the band, way back when SD was just a Facebook page and the glorious, sprawling metropolis of metal you see before you now were nowt more than a glint in Editor Scott Adams‘ eye… So it was a pleasure to dig back into the archive in response to the news that the band have an early-career-spanning box set, fittingly entitled Chapter 1, set to emerge through Esoteric Recordings next month , and dig out our contemporaneous reviews of the albums that comprise it. So here they are, in all their glory, the first three studio albums in all their glory… – Gavin Strickmann

Too Many Gods (Harmony Factory)

Midway through track eight on this, the debut album from pomp rockers Cats in Space, you’ll find yourself realising that you’re black and blue. This sorry state of affairs, rendered because you can’t quite believe the grandiose mixture of Toto and the Alan Parsons Project that’s unfurling itself in front of your incredulous ears and have been forced to keep pinching yourself to maintain some sort of link with what you believe to be reality, is not going to go away in a hurry. I’ve been living with this album for over a month now and still have trouble coming to terms with just how staggeringly good it is.

Opening with a cod-futuristic melange of space-type noises, the album proper opens with title track Too Many Gods, and from the get-go you realise you’re in for a rather special time with this album. Opening with the sort of parping, ivory-tinkling grandeur we’ve not heard since the glory days of the likes of Boston or Touch, this quite clearly is the real deal. Led from the front by vocalist Paul Manzi – who has a nice Englishness to his voice that consistently stops the material from merely sounding like the work of a group of seventies-obsessed Styx wannabes – this band, made up seemingly of members of tribute bands and sidemen of acts long past their sell by dates, have somehow come up with one of the hard rock albums of the decade in Too Many Gods.
Second track Stop has a heavy whiff of brit rockers Sad Café about it – no bad thing – but it pales into insignificance when placed against the five tracks which follow and which form the gargantuan core of the record.

Starting with the jaunty Last Man Standing, this run of tracks comprises quite possibly the best half hour of music you’ll hear in a long, long time. LMS is a gorgeous piece of orchestral pop, the sort of thing Jeff Lynne might have put together in his pomp, and the same can be said of the album’s leadoff single Mr Heartache. A rollicking tale of love rivalry set against a backdrop of extravagant backing vocals and a lavish arrangement that is so faithful to the seventies template you’d be forgiven for thinking it had been written in bespoke fashion for a made-up band featuring in a period drama about life in small town England in 1976, it hits the mark in no uncertain fashion.

But that’s not the best of it. Next up is the album’s first real tour de force, the quite superb Unfinished Symphony. Starting quietly with a nod to classic pre-hanky-in-the-back-pocket Springsteen, the track gets quickly into its stride before hitting an extravagant, pomp-laden chorus that’ll have you splitting your loon pants as you leap from the couch to join in. A paean to sticking to your guns and just following your dream, this is a hair-raisingly inspirational piece of hard rock that you’ll return to time and again to simply wallow in all its overblown grandeur.

Schoolyard Fantasy takes the pomposity down a notch or two, but that doesn’t mean the quality lessens. Based on some beautifully solid basswork from Jeff Brown (who is impressive throughout, it has to be said) and featuring some nice keyboard embellishment from the similarly excellent Andy Stewart, this gentle tale of teen romance features that other classic rock hallmark – the wailing sax solo – before spiralling away into the ether on the back of some nice soloing from band founder Greg Hart. If you grew up listening to AM radio in the seventies, this song will have the hairs on the back of your neck weeping with nostalgic appreciation.

And then, just as you’re thinking they can’t possibly top all of this, they wheel out the titanic The Greatest Story Never Told. An absolute triumph of finely-executed pomp rock mayhem, it’s hard to put into mere words just how absolutely, deliriously splendid this track is. To say that ‘they don’t write songs like this anymore’ may have been right up until this time a couple of months ago, but, Christ on a bike, that’s all in the past now. The future of rock music lies in the heart of a song that sounds like it was written in 1975 – and I like that!

You’ll need hot towels and fresh water to clean up after this, so it’s lucky that the whimsical Only in Vegas follows next, allowing the listener a bit of time to readjust to normality. Funky, sub-ELO – Evil Woman springs to mind on first listen – it’s definitely fluff compared to what’s gone before, but still features a compelling vocal from Manzi and won’t fail to get you singing along come chorus time. And it features robot voices too, so it’s pretty irresistible if truth be told.

The downbeat Man in the Moon doesn’t fare so well, being just a bit too ordinary after the previous forty-odd minutes of hysteria, but Five Minute Celebrity sets the ship back on course with its riotous mix of Queen and The Who getting excitement levels back into the red in exuberant style. As a closing track this would have served perfectly, leaving the listener on a high with the pummelling drums of Steevi Bacon still ringing in the ears, but strangely the band decides to end with the lacrimose Velvet Horizon, a sombre, piano-and-voice ballad that, whilst rather beguiling, does put something of a dampener on the album’s finale.

Still, after what’s been offered up before this only the most dedicated curmudgeon could hope to find fault with this as an album closer, and the only real complaint one can have is that the album ends at all – You’ll find yourself pressing play again as soon as the end finally comes, and, if you’re anything like me, hoping that a follow up from Cats in Space comes quickly. Monstrously good stuff. (Original Review by Scott Adams)

Scarecrow (Harmony Factory)
Cats in Space appeared from nowhere in 2015 with an album, Too Many Gods, that was an absolute tour-de-force of what the band themselves liked to call ‘power pop-rock’. Me, I preferred the term ‘pomp rock mayhem’, but somewhere between those two poles, as ever, lies the truth. Whatever the nomenclature, it was a quite superb album. Surely the band can’t come back in 2017 with a new album, Scarecrow, that’ll top TMG?

Sensibly, they haven’t really tried. Scarecrow, y’see, is a very different beast to Too Many Gods. Not better, not worse – certainly not in the most simplistic understanding of those two words, anyway – it’s very obviously still Cats in Space, just… more so.

Scarecrow offers a more intense listening experience than it’s predecessor. Everything is cranked up to eleven, and not just the volume. Opener Jupiter Calling is pure pomp rock nirvana, summoning the ghosts of names like Boston, Touch and Angel to the table to do the band’s bidding; It succeeds in gloriously bombastic style, but this is Cats in Space we’re talking about, and this style is barely visited again as the band deploy every last trick in the book to give the listener value for money.

If you’ve any sense you’ll already be familiar with the first single from the album, Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. If you haven’t, give it a listen for further reference but shame on you for not keeping your finger on the feline pulse. Clown in Your Nightmare leaves the band’s usual seventies hunting ground to flirt with the sixties and a sound strangely reminiscent of the themes of cult TV shows like Randall and Hopkirk Deceased and The Persuaders; It’s only reminiscence, mind – as usual this is grade A classically nuanced rock n’roll we’re talking about, whatever the trimmings might say to the contrary. Scars is an utterly sublime ballad, ushered in with some Springsteenian harmonica before blossoming into a song that in time will come to be known as a Cats in Space classic. Vocalist Paul Manzi goes above and beyond on this track, bolstered – as ever- by a rousing chorale of assorted backing cats who never fail to hit the target with their harmonies.

September Rain is pure seventies chart heat; Based around a thumpingly solid Jeff Brown bassline the chorus will take those of you old enough right back to the days of Supersonic and Tiswas, Pilot-style harmonies taking the song to the heights alongside some delicious six string work from Greg Hart and Dean Howard.

Hart and Howard then steal the show completely on the fabulous Broken Wing, where the band almost out-pomp even themselves with the most monstrous stadium-ready anthem you’ll hear in 2017. Track-upon-track of pristine harmonies, beefed up by thunderous percussion from Steevi Bacon? Check on both counts. But all that becomes mere bagatelle once the tango mid-section kicks in and the axes take over. My word, I’m trembling just typing about it. Just wait til you hear the Scholz n’Delp style-string slide that starts the solo…

This, as John Gorman and Chris Tarrant so wisely put it so many years ago, is what they want. A guitar arsenal, a synth orchestra (Andy Stewart absolutely nails this and every other track on the album), an avalanche of vocals both lead and backup… Broken Wing just has all this and more, including a nifty change of gear at the end just to let you know that it’s time to break out the air guitars… It’s perfect pomp.

After that you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Cats have shot their collective bolts, but no sir, stay listening for more treats…

2 Minutes 59 is a sparkly pop paean to the days of AM ‘hit’ radio, complete with infectious vocals (and, cheekily, a little piano riff lifted from eighties pretty boys ABC) laced with strident yet melodious axe interjections and an earworm refrain you’ll be humming for the foreseeable future once you’ve let it sink in. Which you will. Man alive, you will.

The quirkily prancing sixties pop of Felix and the Golden Sun (read: sixties through a Beach Boys/Jellyfish filter) might just be a little too much for fans of the heavier side of Cats In Space, however everyone else will be entranced by the summery harmonies, sleighbells and general upbeat jauntiness. It’s here that the full breadth of vision this band possesses is laid at it’s most knowingly bare. There quite literally isn’t anything they aren’t able to do musically, and do it masterfully. Consequently everything they do is a joy to listen to, whether it be gloriously thunderous heavy rock n’roll or a joyful celebration of kitsch. This is truly music for all seasons.

Penultimate track Timebomb is another slice of attractive hard rock that prompts this reviewer to thoughts of Canadian giants Saga, although the crashing gong at the end is surely straight from the Roger Taylor playbook.

Which leaves the title track to bring the curtain down on this spectacular second act. Crashing in like a monstrous long-lost piece of David Byron-era Uriah Heep melodrama, Scarecrow wends its way through nearly eight minutes of pure suspenseful storytelling, Manzi bringing all his theatrical experience to bear in a performance that sounds like an entire West End Cast powering out of one set of lungs; Elsewhere not one ounce of effort is spared by any other of the players to bring the song home. Each man puts in a bravura performance, in an ensemble climax that really does bring the house down.

I said earlier that Scarecrow wasn’t necessarily better than its predecessor, but I was messing about. It is, and it’s also better than anything else in its field you’ll hear in 2017. Majestic. (Original Review by Scott Adams)

(EDITOR’S NOTE: We didn’t review the band’s first album, Cats Alive!, for some reason; however we did despatch Gavin Strickmann to Cardiff’s Motorpoint Arena, where the album was recorded, to catch the band in the raw around the same time, so here we give you that review in lieu…)

Newish UK pomp rock Godz Cats in Space opened proceedings on Deep Purple’s latest return to Cardiff (Europe were putting the meat in the sandwich tonight), and I’m pleased – if not a little surprised, if I’m honest – to note that there was quite a buzz around the place as we waited for the band to hit the stage.

Kicking off with Too Many Gods is a good move (as was the chucklesome Sweeney intro tape), all the singing members of the band shouting ‘hello!’ to the waiting faithful in perfect harmony being a great way to break the ice. Not to mention the song rocks like a bastard live! Vocalist Paul Manzi cuts quite a reserved figure at the front, but his voice is stunning, and the harmonies from the rest of the band are spot on. If we’d had any worries about ‘opening band sound syndrome’ we needn’t have worried, as the band cut through the ether with power and precision.

Mad Hatter’s Tea Party is up next, a song I wasn’t overly keen on on the band’s Scarecrow album released earlier this year. Live the whole thing makes sense, though, as the song becomes an urgent, razor sharp piece of power-pop based on Stewart’s propulsive keys and Manzi’s commanding vocal presence.

I had to miss Timebomb due to the call of nature, too many cans of Lager on the train into the city will do that to a man of my age out on his birthday treat, but I did get back into my seat for the centrepiece of this all-too-short set…

Jeff Brown opens up The Greatest Story Never Told in superb fashion, adding a real seventies soul feel vocally; smooth and silky, just how the ladies used to like it… the mid section of the song is so seventies it hurts, and Mrs Strickmann told me later she half expected a side-stage invasion from the Nigel Lythgoe Dancers to take place… which doesn’t detract from the fact that the song is the greatest pomp rock song written since the glory days of the genre… the duelling solos from Greg Hart and Dean Howard at the end of the song underline just what a tremendous band Cats in Space are.

The band close with a fabulous reading of Five Minute Celebrity, taking time for a bit of call and response from a Cardiff crowd that quite clearly have some new hard rock heroes… all of whom revel in the Who-like dynamics the band effortlessly purvey, Hart windmilling like Pete Townshend, drummer Steevi Bacon punishing his small but perfectly formed kit with Moonesque abandon.

And then, all too briefly, they were gone, leaving their fellow tourists with a hell of a task in following such a consummate rock n’roll performance. That they failed is no reflection on them, but very much a reflection on Cats in Space, for whom the only way now from here is up, up and away!

Daytrip To Narnia (Harmony Factory)

Wow, this is a confusing one. Those of you who’ve been around Sentinel Daily from the very start will know that editor/boss man Scott Adams has been behind UK pomp rockers Cats in Space from the very start of their rise to cottage-industry mega-supremacy. And, truth be told, since I saw the band live in Cardiff supporting Europe and Deep Purple I haven’t been far behind. But now, presented with their third album, the undeniably ambitious Daytrip to Narnia, I’m starting to feel some doubts creep in…

Their first album, Too Many Gods, crept up on everyone, and those of us who feared we’d never hear classic British pomp rock performed by men under the age of seventy (IE the editor/boss man) wept tears of joy at the untrammelled brilliance of tracks like The Greatest Story Never Told. Their second album, Scarecrow, swept up the doubters like your ‘humble’ correspondent with it’s more bombastic, heavier sound – I still break out the album’s standout cut, Broken Wing, on a very regular basis when I need a bit of air guitar-based recreation – but now we come to DTN, and, I guess, the inevitable Concept album. Or at least half of one.

The sound of Daytrip… is broadly similar to Too Many Gods, though the guitars of Dean Howard and Greg Hart are far more polished and polite than they were on Scarecrow. The first half of this new record is full of world-weary, dare I say cynical, prognostications on the music industry, vocalist Paul Manzi relating the slightly depressing subject matter over a mish mash of stylistic mashups. Second track She Talks Too Much mixes UK rockers Queen and The Motors in pretty impressive fashion, whilst Tragic Alter Ego heads back to a staple Cats in Space device – the Beach Boys as played by American grunge popstrels Jellyfish.

Silver and Gold continues the slightly grumpy lyrical content, despite hitching it to a summery pop chassis – equal parts Pilot and Sad Café – but the mood is brought down again somewhat by contemplative ballad Chasing Diamonds. Manzi again gives an assured performance, with the sparse acoustic guitar/keyboard backing giving him full room to prove once again what an impressive vocalist he really is. And the set piece guitar solo, ending of course with a Mayesque run, is a delight. All things considered, this is the Cats at their grandiose, wonderful best.

Side one is rounded out with the more cheery Unicorn; Pomptastic keys usher the song in, before a classic stop-start riff that’s sure to get long term Catfans all hot and bothered drives the song on. But, grumpy old bugger that I am, despite the rip-roaring late-seventies feel of the track the ‘ooh-la-la’ / ‘je ne sais quoi’ chorus refrain just lets the song down for me. But that’s personal taste rather than a deficiency with the music – sorry!

Side two features seven tracks that make up the story of Johnny Rocket, in a sort of Bowie-meets-ELO-meets-The Who fantasia of seventies space age storytelling. Parts of it are pretty good, with disco-rocker Thunder in the Night standing out despite the criminal lack of Kiss-styled whiplash noises that the song is so clearly crying out for; the eponymous title track of this side of the album features some fine lead work and muscular riffage alongside some Britpoppy backing vocals, and therein lies the problem with such determinedly retroactive projects as Day Trip To Narnia, or at least it’s second half; So much time has elapsed since the period that the band is trying to recreate (if they really were extant in 1978 then this album would in effect be trying to recreate the glory days of British pop music circa 1937!), and so many bands have had a pop at doing the same kind of thing, that it’s very difficult for the band to produce anything truly original or not evocative of other, often far inferior bands. It’s ludicrous, for instance, that Cats in Space should be vying for space in my mind with names like Shed Seven and Cast, whilst listening to this album, but they do. And that’s a shame but unavoidable I guess…

However at the end of the day, it has to be said that I’ve been listening to this album for a couple of weeks only, and I’m hoping that the record will offer it’s mysteries up to me a little more over time; the exigencies of ‘the deadline’ mean you’re getting this review a couple of weeks earlier than I’d like, and as such I can only say that Cat devotees will probably lap it up whatever I say, but, at first contact at least, this might be a little too much for the uninitiated. Let’s hope history proves me wrong! (it will – Ed).

So there you have it. The Boss Man was right, of course – I have come to enjoy Daytrip To Narnia over time, and that enjoyment will continue to be enhanced by the inclusion in this new box set of the thumping twelve inch remix of Thunder in the Night that the band has thoughtfully included. Also here for your delectation is the sparkling Scandalous (co-written by ‘seventh Cat, 10CC‘s Mick Wilson), which would have graced any of these albums had it been included, a spirited take on Zep classic Communication Breakdown and the band’s colab with one time manager and Thunder Alumnus Danny Bowes on the Slade classic How Does It Feel, a song which, at the time, was powerful enough to ‘put your windows in’ in the words of the band themselves… Listening back to these albums now what stikes me most is how great it’s been to watch one man’s dream (thank you Greg Hart!) grow in real time, taking so many thousands of us along on the journey. A real privilege, and proof that, as the blessed Dennis DeYoung once said, ‘dreams can come true!’.

Manzi left the band after DTN, leading to a period of turmoil and instability with Mark Pascall at the vocal helm before the band found serenity with Damien Edwards; But that’s a story for another time and, hopefully, another Box Set… Enjoy! – Gavin Strickmann

Chapter 1 releases on July 23rd.