“The Truman Show” clearly showed: if the world around you starts to look too strange, most likely, you are looking at sets. But what to do when a reality show unfolds in your feed, and sets become forums where adult men in all seriousness divide people into “alphas” and “sigmas”? The internet manosphere-an absurd world of toxic advice and male insecurity-has long been asking for a competent trepanation table. The Welsh trio Bau Cat decided to perform this operation: loudly, playfully, to guitar drive-n the new single “Traposphere”.
Photo by Jamie Chapman
If you are not yet familiar with Bau Cat, this is a colorful trio from the seaside town of Prestatyn in North Wales. Lead singer and bassist Abby Butler, along with guitarist Jim Davies and drummer Jack Wells, have already managed to make Britain fall in love with them. In their portfolio are sets at Green Man and headlining the Toad Hall stage at Glastonbury, where they earned a reputation as a band whose concerts are pure catharsis: pressure, playfulness, and infectious recklessness.
Their fresh release “Traposphere”(coming out on the Libertino label) the band aptly dubbed “tough love”, so additions are superfluous. The track hits straight at the culture of misogyny, disinformation, and male complexes breeding on the network. Bau Cat use satire, audacity, and genuine anger, in parallel noting: this culture did not grow out of nowhere, it has its reasons-and in this, it seems, lies the main success of the track: it gets angry precisely, not indiscriminately. As a result, the guys got a slightly predatory, ironic, and uncompromising challenge.
Creatively, “Traposphere” is an important moment for Bau Cat: they found their ideal balance-ringing jangle-pop, nervous energy, joyful eccentricity, and fearlessness. This is a mature, confident work-the band sounds maximally recognizable and focused. Separate respect is deserved by the sound itself. The track was recorded live in the Sheffield studio Tecna together with producer David Glover, nominated for a Mercury Prize for works with Self Esteem and Slow Club. No tricky solutions: the musicians stood in one room, turned on the amps and played everything at once, keeping overdubs to a minimum. The sound of the combo amplifiers bled into neighboring microphones, capturing the raw, live chaos for which the band became a favorite at festivals.
Turning on “Traposphere”, you will hear Bau Cat in their loudest, most breathtaking, and cohesive form. The ideal soundtrack to knock the pride off internet experts and simply dance great. And if returning to the topic of the reality show-the only difference is that here the show ends on a good note: to applause, and not to the exposure of the sets.
