[image=left]http://www.alternativenation.net/gallery/files/9/9/4/28118.jpg[/image]Good lord, this is a terrible record. The only redeeming feature I can find is that Cat On Form have split up, so this is their final release.
A Blanket Over Your Eyes is an outpouring of hatred and vitriol, sure enough, but possibly towards their audience more than anything else.
From the standard post-rock setup of drum, bass, and twin guitars/vocals, Cat On Form manage to distill repetition and boredom into an art form. One chord repeatedly stabbing along with unintelligible screeched vocals is where they’re at, and on an initial hearing, it's not so bad. It promises to break into something interesting at any moment … but never does. Halfway through the first song,
More Escapism, you start to realise that Cat On Form are going nowhere. The chorus is not coming. The melody is not coming either. This one stabbing chord is all they’re going to give. Sweet fucking Christ, is it dull. Okay, that could have just been a statement they wanted to make. An unusual first song to make you sit up and take notice of the rest. But no, not a chance.
Sad For Sale is just the same. Its a different chord, but the same rhythm and the same trick. And on it goes for six tracks. Six tracks of sheer, numbing boredom.
There’s also a collection of live recordings tacked on the end of this EP, rounding it out to a full album’s worth of music. None of the live material adds anything to the turgid mixture though.
No progression, no deviation, no
melody. Just chugging, nihilistic, histrionic angst by numbers. Frankly, whatever the members of Cat On Form are doing now, it can’t be any worse than this.
It puts me in mind of no-wave and art-rock, but there’s no intelligence on display here to temper the repetition. Where Sonic Youth can lock into one groove and repeat it over and over for ten or fifteen minutes, Cat On Form are trying to do the same thing without the groove. The guitar is not a percussive instrument, it doesn’t sound good when you just stab at it fifty-odd times and call it a song.
To be fair, I imagine that Cat On Form wanted to convey disillusion, boredom, despair and neglect. They succeeded, but passing on those feelings doesn’t help anybody. Some rage is needed to focus the mind, some direction to the passion would give it a hook … but there’s neither on display here. Cat On Form seem to be highlighting problems without offering solutions – and listening to that is a pretty fucking bleak way to spend your time.
http://www.catonform.co.uk/
EP: Cat On Form - A Blanket Over Your Eyes 
