‘The Sky With Stars Is Where You Belong’
My impressions on the latest song and music video from Catt!
With the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine, I wish to dedicate this forward to the charities helping support those suffering under such painful occupation and oppression. Please consider donating to the UNRWA or WAQFOREVER to help the vital aid for Palestinians to continue.
Over the past few months I’ve written about each of the new Catt singles in the run-up to the release of their upcoming album ‘At The End of Corridor’, and now Catt have released their latest single ‘Town of Silver’, which is also accompanied by a music video!
Streaming: https://linkco.re/2PFeZZ8Q
I really love seeing how each new song links to the overarching album statement! Compared to the previous singles, ‘Town of Silver’ takes a different approach to the album’s theme of "someone or something waiting at the end of each one's own long corridor”. Where ‘your song’ channelled lament and Landslide’ conveyed anxiety, their newest song portrays loneliness from a gentle, yet jaded perspective that’s learned to live with the feeling’s growing presence within, and outside, their life.
There’s a strong focus on one’s living environment within the song, and how that environment’s tangible presence is affected by the feeling of loneliness, leading to feeling like an outlier in familiar setting. This is such a relatable perspective to me, as I’ve always found it so interesting to focus on how feelings and experiences shape the way we perceive the world!
The music video emphasises this concept amazingly well too, with the majority of the scenes filmed in that outstretched grassy plain set upon the faint backdrop of the city in the background. Visualising the disconnect of personality from reality through this use of landscape. The various shots of looking out from train carriages and the upward-facing camera angles within cityscapes would be familiar to anyone used to averting their eyes from the ground and gazing up at distant scenery. When contrasted with the idyllic hope of finding refuge in the sky amongst the stars that’s mentioned in the lyrics, the abundance of familiar suburban sights conveys tragedy simply through their blunt presentation in the video.
The disconnect of Ogsuhi being the only one playing his instrument whilst the other members remain static, and repeatedly vanish between shots, is my favourite detail of the video because of how crystal clear a visual metaphor it is!
The song even opens with cosmic white noise which continues to play in the background all throughout the song, which sounds like its own undecipherable message from a distant entity that hopes for its message to be heard by someone, anyone. Overlapping the lyrics and instrumentals with this white noise beautifies the loneliness through its universal nature, and I think that’s a solace to be found at the end of the corridor of loneliness. This is easily my favourite element of the song, alongside the amazing guitar melodies that Catt delivers with their every work.
I have so much fun being able to mark the release of each new song with a written piece dedicated to each one! It’s a new experience for me to have this kind of connection with a musical work as it’s released song by song over time, and I’m hoping for this series of written projects to culminate in a really special way when Catt’s album ‘At The End of Corridor’ releases! Working with Ogushi on my interviews has given me the opportunity to have such a unique insight into his and the band’s creative processes, which I hope to continue to reflect as I write about their upcoming music! Please continue to enjoy Catt’s releases, and look forward to what they’ll be releasing in the future!
-Mustafa
Thank you to Ogushi for the opportunity to write this piece to coincide with the song’s release!
