Sauce

“You’ve come a long way, baby …” With both an attempt to break a venue crowd record and a show backed up by a full orchestra planned for next month, the days of Hello, Hello getting chart success have never felt so long ago. The Cat Empire are not the same band you once knew, but it’s clear they still feel like they’ve got a lot to prove. Frontman Felix spoke to me from Brisbane.

So Many Nights has already been called your strongest release yet in reviews. In what ways would you say that this album is superior to your previous releases?
I think that, when you put six hundred shows performed around the world, and a lot of traveling and a lot more experience to write songs about, you sort of come up with an album that’s your best yet. It happens to bands sometimes; they work for a long time, they do well, because of their live show and the feeling around the band and everything like that, and eventually they make the album that’s their best studio album, you know? Where they really get it right … I think that that was this album for us.

From what I’ve read, you’re going for some kind of record attempt in October.
Well the story behind that for us is, when we were starting out our touring careers, we used to go to places and spend time there. Like, we’d do a season at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, and we’d do a season at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, and play there for two or three weeks. And there was something about the nature of going to a city and playing night after night which was a big part of shaping the band’s early approach to touring. And it’s something that we’ve missed, because, over the last three years, we’ve been traveling non-stop – we’ve been in a different city every night, pretty much. We’ve been living in a tour bus. We see things kind of fleetingly. We see pretty much stages and shows, and maybe the city for a night or two sometimes, and then you pass on. And while it’s been exciting, it was a goal of ours to return to Australia with this album, and to at least try to go to a couple of cities and spend a bit of time there. And Sydney offered us the opportunity, because we’ve had a great history in Sydney; we’ve got a really strong following there. And the idea of playing at the Metro, which is where we started out, sort of works for us. The fact that they have a record there – we thought it’d be a bit of fun to try and break the record.

So whose record will you be breaking?
I think it’s the record held by You Am I … I think they did seven shows there with Powderfinger, when Powderfinger were starting out. And every time we were there, years and years ago when we used to play the Metro in Sydney, they always used to tell us about the record. We’d broken one at the Prince Of Wales in Melbourne, which was a similar kind of venue. So, you know, all these years later, it’s a bit of fun to come back and see if we can set a new benchmark.

You’re also playing a show with the Australian Youth Orchestra the same month. A band playing with an orchestra can go two ways. It’s obviously worked for Hilltop Hoods and Metallica, but it sure as hell didn’t work for KISS. In what ways will the orchestra affect the sound of your material, and how you physically perform the live show?
Well, I think that the new album … Ollie, the keyboard player, did some really wonderful string arrangements, which really had a big affect on the sound of the new album. They’re very unique string arrangements, and they’re quite subtle – not like the normal strings that you’d expect to be behind a rock band or something like that; they’re actually quite jazz-oriented string arrangements, a lot of them. So firstly, the album So Many Nights … it uses strings in a really quite unique way, I think. So pretty much what we’re going to do is just extend on that, and we’re going to do a workshop with the Youth Orchestra, based on improvisation … giving people who are used to reading notes from a page completely the opportunity to do other things with it … The whole team has got a genuine air of authenticity about it, and we’re actually going to do something quite different with the orchestra in some parts … The orchestra’s not going to be there for schmaltz – it’s going to be there for real substance. So I think it’s going to be a really interesting project.

With this, and the record attempt … The Cat Empire has already achieved multi-platinum sales and stuff, so how accurate would it be to say that … you guys still feel like you’ve got a lot to prove?
I think so. I mean, it’s definitely true … I feel in a wonderful place with this band at the moment, because it’s achieved a lot of success so far, here and overseas, and it can do successful tours and it can release albums and all that sort of stuff. But honestly, the things that interest me about music aren’t just selling records or doing sold-out tours. The idea of playing with an orchestra and doing it properly, or the idea of putting on shows which are really, really unique, and doing something different … The idea of continuing to be able to go to different places and do different things, and really, you know, try and work on music in Australia, and see where we can take it, is the thing that I got into music [for] in the first place.

The Cat Empire go AWOL with Triple J in Burnie on Saturday the 13th of October.

Listen to an MP3 of the full interview Below