This writer was never enamoured with Catatonia (to this day I can’t listen to that bloody “Mulder & Scully” without foaming at the mouth), but the gradual musical rehabilitation of their singer CERYS MATTHEWS has been – against the odds - one worth keeping an eye on.
Her debut album “Cockahoop” benefited from her marriage and relocation to the American Midwest, not to mention her apparent savvy in choosing sound collaborators such as producer Stuart Sikes (White Stripes/ Walkmen) and mixer Jeremy Ferguson (Josh Rouse/ Be Your Own Pet). The overall sound was organic and attractive and the discreet country tinges really suited her. Your reviewer surprised himself when he discovered it was an album he would return to long after the review was submitted.
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New single “Open Roads” again suggests good things are coming this way when Cerys’s (I think it’s fair to say) eagerly-anticipated second album “Never Said Goodbye” finally arrives in a few weeks. Its’ trailer single is downbeat, experience-soaked country-pop propped up by Fender Rhodes and discreet orchestration and finds Matthews sounding alluringly girly and full of a nostalgic sense of wonder. Strangely, it suits her far more than it would have done ten years back and if she maintains this endearingly dog-eared’n’wistful form, the parent album could again be the very essence of a ‘grower’.
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