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Catatonia were originally formed in 1992 in Cardiff, when guitarist Mark Roberts met Cerys Matthews while she was busking Jefferson Airplane songs outside Debenhams. Combining attitude with highly melodic hooklines the band had four successful albums and a string of hit singles that included ‘Road Rage’ and ‘Mulder & Scully.’ After almost ten years they split up in the summer of 2001. Cerys also appeared as a guest vocalist on Space's hit single "The Ballad Of Tom Jones", and even dueted with the Welsh sex-bomb himself.
The journey the former Catatonia singer has taken on her first solo album may surprise some original fans, yet ‘Cockahoop’ represents the most abundant expression of her passionate approach to life and music, her instinctive feel for a great song and the emotional warmth of her unique voice.
Produced by acclaimed Bob Dylan and Ryan Adams steel guitarist, Bucky Baxter in his Nashville Studio, "It was a departure from anything I'd done with Catatonia because we could treat every song differently and bring people in," she explains. "There was no pressure and it felt natural. I've been kicking against the modern way of recording for a long time. I wanted to hear every nuance of the instruments playing together and the rough edges, too. If you clean all that up, to me it becomes devoid of soul. I wanted to go back to making music in its purest form." Where possible, the mostly acoustic instruments were recorded live to capture the spontaneity of seasoned musicians playing off each other.
"My original plan had been to make an album of traditional folk songs. I've been collecting them for years," she recalls. "But it was a lovely, conducive place to write and I could feel my confidence growing.”
There's no question that ‘Cockahoop’ is a radically different kind of album to anything we ever heard from Cerys before. "I didn't want heavy drums and lots of layered guitars and effects. We were after a groove and a vibe thing," she says. "We just tried to play the guts of the song."
The playing is as vivid and potent as you would expect from some of the finest musicians in the world. But mostly, it's a record that puts the spotlight on the songs and Cerys' voice, which has taken on a richer patina than we've heard before. There are traces of folk, country, soul and pop - and much else besides. ‘Cockahoop’ is all and none of them at the same time and its felicitous agility doesn't fit easily into any musical category.
"If there is a theme to the album, it's simply a story of learning to live and enjoy life again,"Cerys says. "It's about finding your feet. Learning to have faith. Tasting something that you had forgotten existed. There's nothing negative or cynical.”
"I'm looking forward to seeing if people enjoy hearing the record as much as I enjoyed making it," she says. It's the most honest record I could make."
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