{"id":7327,"date":"2013-07-17T08:23:23","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T15:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=7327"},"modified":"2013-07-16T13:26:46","modified_gmt":"2013-07-16T20:26:46","slug":"the-cat-empire-know-their-surroundings-including-victoria-and-phillips-backyard-weekender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2013\/07\/17\/the-cat-empire-know-their-surroundings-including-victoria-and-phillips-backyard-weekender\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cat Empire know their surroundings, including Victoria and Phillips Backyard Weekender"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a very real possibility that when a band spend as much time on the road as Australian jazz\/ska\/funkers The Cat Empire, they could lose track of where they are on any given night. That\u2019s why we\u2019re impressed when drummer Will Hull-Brown not only knows exactly where he is, he\u2019s also well aware of the fact that he\u2019ll be in Victoria on July 19 as part of the the Phillips Backyard Weekender, a two-day music event taking place at Phillips Brewery.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, we\u2019re just playing a cultural centre in Minneapolis tonight and then we\u2019re on our way over to see you guys in Victoria in a couple of weeks,\u201d says Hull-Brown when we reach him by phone. \u201cIt\u2019s a six-week tour and it\u2019s lots of travelling, but we\u2019re pretty lucky that we have a good driver and we can just chill out in the back of the bus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"It\u2019s<\/a>
It\u2019s always a party for the six fellows in The Cat Empire (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The group is touring for their recently released album, Steal the Light<\/i>, which is a return to the partying, dancey ways of their earlier material, and Hull-Brown says they are eager to bring those vibes to our fair city again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve loved it there. We\u2019ve come to Victoria a few times and in some ways it feels like home,\u201d he says. \u201cA beautiful city, nice people, good food, and everyone\u2019s up for good music. We love that part of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that The Cat Empire has been together for over 12 years, they\u2019ve had lots of time to reflect on what it is that\u2019s made them such a popular touring band, as well as their creative strengths and weaknesses. The result of this reflection brought them to their latest and fifth album, which has brought their career full circle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe natural thing for us was to always make upbeat, feel-good, danceable music,\u201d says Hull-Brown, \u201cso we wanted to get back to our roots, have fun, and do a party album with bangin\u2019 tunes that people can go nuts on the dance floor to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another consideration the band made when writing Steal the Light <\/i>was to make an album from which they could play every song in a live setting, rather than having to pick and choose which ones to include in their shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn previous albums we had to pass up certain songs, but with this new one we\u2019ve played most of the songs, and by the end of the tour we\u2019ll have played them all,\u201d says Hull-Brown. \u201cWe\u2019ve got the luxury now of mixing up set lists depending on where we are or what we feel like doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cat Empire is an eclectic band that gets pulled in a bunch of different musical directions on stage, but they always hold things together, and that almost-chaotic energy is what keeps them exciting. Hull-Brown credits some of this frenetic onstage energy to vocalist\/trumpet player Harry James Angus.<\/p>\n

\u201cHarry leads a lot of that. You never know when you\u2019re going to do a solo; he\u2019ll just point to you and say, \u2018Alright, drum solo! Bass solo!\u2019 So sometimes we don\u2019t have much choice,\u201d he laughs. \u201cBut it really depends on how we feel, like what kind of music we\u2019ve been listening to that day, and we might start a jam based on that during the set. We always want to have freedom to mess about during the songs. It\u2019s an important part of our live set and it\u2019s essential for us to do that, otherwise I\u2019m not even sure we\u2019d exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe some of that impromptu energy will translate nicely to their upcoming show here. And the best thing of all is the beer will be close and in much abundance.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I know,\u201d chuckles Hull-Brown. \u201cGreat, man; I really look forward to the show and trying the beer there!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a very real possibility that when a band spend as much time on the road as Australian jazz\/ska\/funkers The Cat Empire, they could lose track of where they are on any given night. That\u2019s why we\u2019re impressed when drummer Will Hull-Brown not only knows exactly where he is, he\u2019s also well aware of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-july-17-2013"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7329,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7327\/revisions\/7329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}