ONE of Australia’s favourite live bands, The Cat Empire, is taking a break from recording itslatest album to launch a new outdoor live music venue at Sir James Mitchell Park on the South Perth Foreshore this Friday, March 5.
Felix Riebl – front man of the six-piece Melbourne-based fusion band – said fans could expect to hear at least a couple of new tracks at this special one-off show that would demonstrate the new direction the band is heading with their fifth album, to be released mid-year.
“This album will be quite different to the other albums,” Riebel said.
“In the past, we have a done a lot of the writing before we get into the studio, but for this album, which has been a very group-devised album, we are leaving quite a bit of it open to see what happens when we get into the studio, which should make it pretty interesting.”
Riebl said it was very hard to talk about an album that hadn’t been made yet, but noted the songs so far had a lot more unity to them and were going to have bigger choruses than in the past.
“Especially with a band as strange as us, you never know what is going to happen when you get into the studio, and that is the truth,” he said.
“From experience, what you say is often very different to how it turns out… then again you never know.
“The upcoming album for me, and I am going to make a stupid sweeping statement which will probably not even be true, is my songs are as melodic as No Longer There but with much more of a street music feeling .”
Writing and singing songs with a more melodic feel has become a passion for Riebl, who admitted he used to dislike his voice.
“I have always loved performing but in the last six months something changed in me emotionally and I learnt how to sing, my voice opened up or something like that… and for the last eight months I haven’t left anything behind when I have gone out on stage and I have loved it,” he said.
Without going into too much detail, Riebel said this change in his singing came through some serious issues in his personal life.
“When you have been through something that is intense emotionally, something changes in you,” he said.
“I always wrote very wordy songs and relied on singing rhythmically, because I always hated my voice in a funny way, yet all of the music that I love is music that is melodic and has someone singing it.
“For some reason, something changed and I started to write songs that were like that and learning how to sing them better and that meant being on stage wasn’t being self-conscious anymore.
“It was about singing, which is just letting go. It is something that has taken a long time.”