Born again

Catherine Wheel re-energize

by Ted Drozdowski

Jimmy Carter -- who may go down in history as the last man with a conscience to sit in the Oval Office -- called it a "crisis of confidence": the feeling that, against all reason, things have gone wrong and there's no apparent way to make them right again. Such was the plight of Catherine Wheel when it came time to write songs for their new Wishville (Columbia). Fortunately, lives did not hang in the balance of this crisis, and, more fortunate still, Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with resolving it. Nonetheless, it was a massive obstacle for the members of one of rock's most intelligent and sonically daring outfits, an obstacle created by the euthanization of their previous CD in the American marketplace. And it resulted not only in insecurity about their abilities but in the loss of their charter bassist.

What happened is this. In 1997 the band made a pop masterpiece called Adam and Eve (Fontana/Mercury), their fifth album. It was the culmination of a widescreen exploration of guitar textures and dynamics that began with 1992's Ferment (Fontana/Mercury) and its radio breakthrough, "Black Metallic." Adam and Eve plumbed one of rock's favorite subjects -- relations between men and women. Typically for the band, this was done quite smartly, with insight into the knotty inner wiring of love and sex's complex psychology. Yet the album rocked like hell, shimmered when it was right, and had plenty pop hooks. At the time, the entire band agreed with drummer Neil Sims's assessment: "We all love this record so much more than anything else we've ever done."

Things went bad within weeks of the album's release. Mercury started to sink, and Catherine Wheel chose to jump ship after the label refused to provide tour support or make a video. Which meant abandoning -- at least in America -- an album they believed was their best.

"I consider that our lost record in this country," frontman Rob Dickinson explained last month before Catherine Wheel played a sold-out pre-Wishville date at Karma Club. "Luckily, we have a good label in Europe and we stuck with it there. We did a lot of touring in England, played a lot of European festivals, and had a modest hit. Adam and Eve was a real renaissance for us over there."

It wasn't until they started creating Wishville that the weight of their sacrifice bore down. "You see," guitarist Brian Futter elaborates, "when it came time to write, we didn't have as much a block as we had confusion as to what was any good. It was a horrible feeling. Because Adam and Eve didn't really have a full life in this country, there was no confirmation that what we'd done was any good."

"I had a Post-It wall of ideas," says Dickinson, "but couldn't come up with anything for three months. Every riff had been heard before, every melody. I think we went a bit crazy."

They found comfort and support in reuniting with producer Tim Friese-Greene, the former headman of Talk Talk, who manned the controls for Catherine Wheel's wall-of-guitars debut, Ferment. "Tim was of the opinion," Dickinson explains, "that writing an album with six singles -- which we determined was our mission -- could be done in an intellectual way, not as some commercial thing that had to be endured. Hell, we had the best record company in America, having signed with Columbia, the best manager, the best producer on our side, and we're one of the best bands in England. The only thing we didn't have was some fuckin' songs. But as I started to chill out, things started to happen."

Friese-Greene also introduced a more collaborative writing style to the band, with Dickinson and Futter penning choruses or verses to complete each other's ideas -- rather than creating separately, as they had before -- and Sims recording rhythm loops for them to work with. The latter idea in particular inspired some of Wishville's most compelling numbers, like the delicately reflective "All of That" -- a quiet beauty of organic trip-hop -- and the teeth-gritting guitar explosion "Gasoline." After the songs were written, it was determined that they demanded a different type of bass playing and that Dave Hawes was not the man to provide it. Ben Ellis became his replacement after 40 bassists were auditioned.

Wishville opens with "Sparks Are Gonna Fly," a single that -- like "Gasoline" -- has the octane to catch fire on American radio. That is, if programmers, the corporate voodoo cult who control what we hear on the mainstream airwaves, give it a shot. The song proves itself a stunner on disc, just as it did at Karma last month. A few numbers into a performance so strong it overcame the room's crappy acoustics, Dickinson -- who's blessed with the warm near-baritone and the charismatic demeanor of a major star-in-waiting -- ignited "Sparks." "Now the sparks are gonna fly," he sang. " 'Cause I'm turned on again. I'm taking off. I'm taking off!" Over a bed of churning guitars, a hard-edged stop-and-start chorus, and the faux vulnerable seductive lyric, "Sparks" sounds like a theme for the band's re-emergence. Which, of course, it is.