Every week in this column, WTSR staff member Chris Kubak will examine another relatively forgotten artist and/or album from the WTSR Back Library

If there is one thing that we all know is true, it’s that in the music business you can go from being on top of the world to becoming an almost forgotten afterthought in almost no time at all. How does a band go from having what could be argued was the album of the year, to being harangued by critics and disillusioned by unfulfilled expectations to the point of hanging it up?  It’s not a new phenomenon, as it’s a cycle that we’ve seen come full circle repeatedly in the history of modern popular music. For our purposes though, we’re going back to the latter half of the 1990s to a band originating from Great Yarmouth in the United Kingdom.

The Catherine Wheel over the course of their ten year career was, from time to time,on the receiving end of an awful lot of flak. Some people claimed that they weren’t original enough, they weren’t bringing anything new to the table, their songwriting should have been better, etc. But one thing that the quartet consisting of Rob Dickinson, Brian Futter, Dave Hawes, and Neil Sims was tremendous at was their ability to morph and evolve as a band without ever losing their identity or compromising their sound.  Dickinson meanwhile generally had a reputation for being one of the most interesting lyricists of his day.  Maybe it was just because everyone was keenly aware of the talent that each member brought with them to the table. They could have been the biggest band in the world, and quite frankly you could make a brief argument that they should have been the biggest band in the world. By that same turn, Dickinson also could have and should have been one of the most recognizable voices on the planet.  They were incubated from a period of time and a scene that helped to launch bands like Ride, Swervedriver, the Verve, the Charlatans UK, and more into the spotlight. When the dust settled in the afterglow of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory, the Catherine Wheel were one of the few of them that remained. The life span of a majority of the members of that era was not very high, which makes their relative longevity an intriguing footnote in a career like none other.  At the same time their relative lack of commercial success, especially in the US, remains baffling to me: just as much so as the odd twists and turns the ending of their career took.

In 1997, the band released their fourth LP Adam and Eve. Prior to this point the group had been alternately lauded and criticized for their prior releases (Chrome and Happy Days respectively). However, with Adam and Eve, the Catherine Wheel gave the public the kind of album that can cement a reputation. It was a veritable tour de force for the band that found them at their most inspired and most dynamic, the most full realized and cultivated effort to date.  There was a raw power in those guitar chords and an almost epic, cinematic quality to their songwriting that gave these songs a greater emotional license.  “Future Boy” opens to a building Pink Floyd-esque wall of swirling guitar effects before giving way to Dickinson’s simple acoustic strumming and earnestly soulful vocals, a cycle which repeats itself once more before song’s end.  “Delicious,” “Broken Nose,” and “Satellite” take the rumbling guitar progressions of Oasis-style Britpop and develop them into something more intriguing than your basic rock song.  In my opinion however, the two true gems of the record are “Phantom of the American Mother” and “Ma Solituda,” the former of which surges and shakes like a Pink Floyd song once again, and the latter of which ebbs and flows with wonderful balance before bursting open during the choruses in wonderful, radiantly melting tones and harmonies.  While a vast majority of the songs on this album clock in at over five minutes in length, nothing feels forced and nothing feels too weighty or overbearing for theirs or the listeners’ good.

If it seems like I’m gushing, I’m not the only one to.  You have to understand, Adam and Eve was critically revered to the point that at least one music magazine (The Big Takeover) at the time declared it album of the year, even ahead of Radiohead’s OK Computer.  In retrospect, this type of claim may be just slightly preposterous, but it still speaks volume as to the kind of reaction it received from the press.  But despite all of this, the record only managed to reach #53 on the UK Albums Chart.  They were barely able to even crack the top 50 on the UK singles chart, with “Broken Nose” topping out at #48 and both “Delicious” and “Ma Solituda” peaking at #53.  Even in spite of this kind of disappointing performance you would think that in the wake of Adam and Eve that the Catherine Wheel would be set, that the pump would be primed for a long and fruitful career from there on.  Things never seem to work out that easily though. The band fell into a period of creative stagnation for a few years afterwards and bassist Dave Hawes was relieved of his duties, much to the irritation of many fans.

When they did finally return in 2000 with their 5th album Wishville on a new label (Columbia), the critics where quick to point out the album’s shortcomings and the additional success that the band had hoped for did not manifest itself.  All these factors combined to mark the end of the Catherine Wheel, but I always thought the band got a bit of a raw deal in the process.  It’s very much unfair to try and label the album as a failure, when it was an effort that depending how you study it was either a few years ahead of it’s time or just a few years too late.  Quite frankly, I consider Wishville to be one of the most misunderstood records of the last 20 years.  I will grant that it lacks many of the dynamics that made Adam and Eve so endearing and is basically on the whole a clumsier sounding affair.  But Adam and Eve also set the bar so high that reaching those heights was probably nearly impossible in the first place.  Still, scattered throughout the nine songs that make up Wishville are highs that cannot be tossed aside or ignored.  Punctuated by the soaring “What We Want to Believe In,” it’s a grind-it-out mixture of British style shoegazer and trad rock that smoulders and growls at a ballad’s pace.  There was no reason why “What We Want to Believe In” couldn’t have been and shouldn’t have been a rock radio hit in this country, as it has the same kind of anthemic feel and emotional connect that something like “Don’t Look Back in Anger” possesses.  “Gasoline” catches your attention early with its machine gun snare drumming intro and psuedo-blusey feel that is probably the album’s greatest connect to Adam and Eve.  Elsewhere the pulsating, marching foundations of “Sparks Are Gonna Fly” and “Lifeline” are nice enough tunes, if a bit generic sounding when lined up with the rest of their catalog.

Perhaps it was the strain of trying to follow up an album of the magnitude of Adam and Eve that ultimately led to their demise.  Or maybe it was fact that they took their best shot and gave it everything they had and still for whatever reason could not scale the mountain of public opinion and be counted amongst the popular vote cream of the crop.  It’s a shame because with everything that they released over the course of their careers the Catherine Wheel left us with one of the most puzzling and riveting collection of songs to originate from the British scene of the 1990s.  As for their future, who knows if we’ll ever see the likes of them again.  The other members have moved on to other projects of their own, and after releasing his only solo album Fresh Wine for the Horses in 2005 (and re-releasing it in 2008), Rob Dickinson seems to be more focused right now on restoring and customizing Porsche 911s.  But the fact that these records can still hold up well years later is a telling testament to the talent they had as a band.  As I’ve told people before, never totally count a good band out.

Listening Recommendations: Obviously I’m going to tell you to go out and listen to Adam and Eve in it’s entirety, but if I had to cut it down to just a few selections, I would recommend “Future Boy,” “Broken Nose,” “Phantom of the American Mother,” and “Ma Solituda.”  From Wishville, I would say “What We Want to Believe,” “Gasoline,” and “Mad Dog” are good start points.

Chris Kubak is a long time staff member of WTSR, having served as Music Director from 2004-2007 and Production Director from 2007-2008. He currently hosts “Striker Bill Radio” on Monday nights from 9PM-12AM, playing the “best lost nuggets of the WTSR Back Library.”