Cat’s Miaow – When You Smiled and Turned Away (Yellow vinyl)

The Cat’s Miaow started in 1992 as a home-recording duo, Bart Cummings and Andrew Withycombe knocking out songs on Withycombe’s four-track. Soon joined by Kerrie Bolton and Cam Smith, the quartet spent the next five years quietly, slowly working away in the suburbs of Melbourne. They’ve long been spoken-of in hushed tones in pop circles for their perfectly unadorned nuggets of gentle indiepop mastery, put to 4-track tape and drip-fed to the world a few decades back via 7” singles, cassettes and compilation appearances.

Following a pair of recent and *very* well-received compilations on the excellent World of Echo label, The Cat’s Miaow were inspired to regroup to play some shows and begin working on new material. The result is “When You Smiled And Turned Away,” remarkably the band’s debut studio album and happily some of their finest recordings yet. All the hallmarks of the band’s classic sound remain intact: a fragile, warm melancholia built around Bart and Andrew’s elegant, spare songwriting, the exuberant patter of Cam’s brushed drums and the glow of Kerrie’s celestial soprano vocal.

Themes of self discovery, regret, yearning and loss continue to loom large but are buoyed by sprightly tempos and subtle splashes of phased guitars and oscillating synthesizers. And at fourteen songs clocking in at just over half-an-hour, The Cat’s Miaow are still masters of pop concision. It’s a gift to have them back!