Year: 1997
Label: TVT
Genres: Pop-rock, 90s Alternative, Glam
This album is a complete guilty pleasure for me. Revelling in mid-90s alternative retro-glam kitsch, I always thought of Catherine as the fun-loving, Kiss worshipping kid brother to the Smashing Pumpkins’ brooding, angsty, Albert Camus reading trenchcoat clad goth teenager. But if any band deserved to slavishly rip off the Pumpkins these guys earned the right – their drummer Kerry Brown married Pumpkin D’arcy, and they were friends and contemporaries of the band, occasionally filling in on each other’s records during recording. In fact, if their biggest hit – ‘Four Leaf Clover’ – hadn’t featured D’arcy on backing vocals there’s a good chance it wouldn’t have been as big a hit as it was (not that it was even anything to write home about - I never saw it on Video Hits - the true sign of crossover success), and I probably never would have heard of this band. Wretsky also appears on a couple of other numbers here, but you can tell the call and response of ‘Four Leaf Clover’ was written with crossover hit-by-association potential in mind. What’s more James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlain are even credited in the liner notes of this album for “additional equipment”.
It’s funny then that Billy Corgan is the only Pumpkin who’s name doesn’t appear on this album, because he’s all over it musically. Hot Saki & Bedtime Stories carries the ghost of Corgan in its melodies, and its distinctly crunchy but sweet guitar sound, so I thank the Pumpkins for acquainting me with Catherine – even if their biggest virtue is being a sweet reminder of how great that band was.
Hot Saki & Bedtime Stories hasn’t dated too well, but perhaps that’s why I find it so endearing. To borrow a phrase from Forrest Gump’s mum Sally Fields this album is a bit like a box of chocolates, but not in the sense that you never know what you’re going to get. I mean, the flavours are included on the box – you know you’re gonna get chocolate, right? It’s more like there are a bunch of flavours here and, although you know that you’re probably not gonna want to try some of them again, others will taste good for a few seconds and then you’ll be onto the next one or you’ll put the box down. And when it comes down to it, it might not be a square meal, but chocolate is tasty. And if you eat the whole box you’ll probably feel sick and not want any more for a while. Yeah, this album’s kind of like that.
All the tracks here have catchy hooks, sugary melodies, shiny production and memorable arrangements. Plus every once in a while a lyric will make you smile, like this one from 'It’s Gonna Get Worse':
Count your friends/it won’t take long
Including yourself you’ll find/you only have one
Ha, cute. Every track here is like a big fat sugar hit, both musically and production-wise. The drums are compressed as hell, and there are about six or seven different guitar sounds, most of which feature on ‘Four Leaf Clover’ – the more is more school has definitely been applied. It takes me back to the time when ‘alternative’ was the new black and indie rock bands were offering up the best parts of delectable pop music with the balls of rock and enough indie cred to make their songs still sound cool at the chance to take a spin through the charts. Not many of them succeeded, but it was fun to see them try. And to top it off the album artwork had that great ultra high contrast, kitschy 50s nick nacks in front of luminescent backdrops design-style borrowed from The Cure's Wild Mood Swings album.
It’s not all crazy kitschy colour and upbeat pop numbers though. 'Sign of the Cross' is sad in a “I feel blue today” kind of way, not a “the world fucking sucks” way – it’s still slightly hopeful and has a gorgeously indulgent lethargo stoner swagger about it. It’s the perfect soundtrack to stoned, melancholy suburban teen sex – it’s like naive bubblegum-pop flirting with the dark side but not having the guts to take it too far.
Perhaps the most derivative track on the album is 'Pink Floyd Poster'. Everything about it – from Mark Rew’s bruised vocal delivery, through the whistful chiming guitars, to the crunchy chorus with its carbon copy Siamese Dream power chords – is Pumpkins lite. And to make it even more cringe inducing during the outro we get a field recording of kids playing. Ah, the follies of youth! By 1997 Corgan and co. had moved on from psychedelia-influenced alternative rock and were focussing on the proto-Adore goth-electro revisionism of 'The End is the Beginning Is the End'. Catherine sort of picked up where Siamese Dream left off and brought it careening into glam and 70s AOR.
It’s by no means a classic, nor is it even a lost gem, but Hot Saki & Bedtime Stories makes me smile. It’s an enjoyable romp through the mid-90s collision of pop and alternative, and although (or perhaps because) it's kitschy and cute, I have a continuing soft spot for this album and all its rambunctious, sugar-coated swagger.
