Bloody typical. You wait ages for your favourite 2-piece punk bands to release a killer album and then two come along in the space of a fortnight. First up we had The Meffs release their awesome debut What A Life, and now it’s the turn of Manchester duo The Sewer Cats, with the release of their sophomore album Obnoxious, on TNS records. Now, obviously in the grand scheme of things, I’ve been sitting on this album for quite some time, desperate to share it with anyone who’ll listen and that time is now, just a few days shy of its official release.
The follow up to 2022’s Cute Aggression, this album carries on from where the last one left off, picking up the ball on the halfway line and driving deep into enemy territory. Cass and Josh unleash 11 new songs, feral punk rock at its best, calling out the male dominated music scene and the sexist/misogynistic pricks wherever they raise their ugly heads.
Opening track Boo Hoo!, is the embodiment of a music industry shaped piñata, being flagellated to within an inch of its life by a 12ft Vic Firth drum stick. The crocodile tears of fragile male egos, challenged by a simple request for more female representation on bills, at festivals, “50/50 is all we want”. On spilling its guts, Cass simply kicks the simpering patriarchy to the kerbside. “Are you gonna be the problem, Or are you gonna try to solve ‘em?. Big pussy energy indeed!
90 Seconds to Midnight finds Cass actively embracing an impending 3rd World War, winding the hands forward on the doomsday clock, borne out of the lack of a positive discernible future, powerless to affect ones one destiny. Taking Trouble Funk’s Drop The Bomb to its logical conclusion, Josh’s searing outro echoing in to oblivion. No cap as the kids might say these days!
There’s a definite country and western vibe to recent single Tell Me Something True, inspired by a dream Cass had, where Josh passed up the opportunity to dance with her at a wedding reception, citing missed opportunities and not being able to recreate them again. However, there’s also an underlying note of not following one’s dreams and being held back by another’s lack of dynamism. A lot to unpack there in such a short, sweet tune. Imagine The White Stripes with a pissed off Meg on vocals and you’re halfway there!
Those flavour of the month, new kids on the block guitar bands, 5 middle class kids on a gap year, get a real shoeing in Star & Garter. Overnight successes, fast tracked for stardom, with egos measured in units called “Liams”, they think dues are people from Israel, as they clamber over each other for their 15 minutes of fame. They come, they go and nobody even notices. Except that is, the charity shop staff consigning another crème brulee tape to the pile! It’s a brutal put down and one suspects, a true story from experience, one repeated up and down the country.
You Cannot Be Serious is a song about loss, rather than tennis star John McEnroe. Nobody likes to be the one left behind, the insecurities, the jealousy when they’ve moved on, but you have yet to do so. It’s easily the slowest tempo song here, sprawling as it does over 4 minutes, their first to do so and a good minute longer than anything else to date. It’s a soulful, heart on the sleeve journey, that wouldn’t sound out of place on an L7 album. This is definitely going to be a new sing-a-long favourite when played live.
Title track Obnoxious builds slowly, before exploding out of the grunge into Bikini Kill/Huggy Bear. I can’t say for certain, but it seems to be aimed at a male journalist who may have written something less than complimentary about Cass as she seems pissed. Slay, as the Gen Z say!
Get It continues the vibe of the leading your best life, whilst others conspire to keep you down, with their snouts in the trough, more concerned about building their Instagram following than a just and equal society. “Can’t put the heating on? You should get a better job”, springs straight from the Tory soundbite archive during Covid. Sunak and Johnson, history will see you judged.
The Night At.. gives off very strong dark vibes, like a David Lynch nightmare. Changing tempo halfway through and then descending into a world where Nirvana meets Witch Fever, fading out with slightly disturbing maniacal laughter. A happy little narrative it is not.
The bouncy but stripped back Parasites, with itscheekyPokémon reference, lifts the mood and that’s not something I ever thought I’d write, but it’s a sure fire mosh pit starter.
Josh treats us to some mean heavy fretwork during Lion Heart, another song about self-belief and being true to yourself against all the odds.
The thing about lyrics is that they’re often open to the listener’s own interpretation, and sometimes close scrutiny cheapens the writer’s intention. They are nonetheless worthless if your reading of them is at odds with the original meaning, art is where you find it and this leads me clumsily onto my own take of album closer, Our Band Could Be Your Life. Cribbed from the book of the same name by Michael Azerrad, which chronicles life from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, who in turn stole it from the Minutemen song – History Lesson – Part II, written in 1983, this feels autobiographical for Cass and Josh, their own Thelma & Louise or Bonnie & Clyde moment, and leaves me feeling slightly voyeuristic looking in on their life together. It’s difficult to understand where they begin and The Sewer Cats end, and I hope I never do! Oh yeah, it’s also the best song on the album and the best one that Throwing Muses never wrote!
One of the things that make The Sewer Cats such a vital and exciting band, is the sheer range of sounds that they manage to create with just drums and guitar, although Cass’s vocals are an instrument in their own right to be fair. It should be limiting but I think that works in their favour. Josh is simply one of the most original and percussive guitarists around. The sweat and steam that pours off of him onstage could power the National Grid. Woe betide us if he ever shares a stage with Dom Corry from The Battery Farm, as the flux capacitor will never survive.
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