Cat Dowling ‘Animals’ Review: Irish indie artist’s latest release offers a layered and empathetic look at romance and relationships.
Irish chanteuse Cat Dowling’s latest album Animals opens with the title track, and its winning mix of surreal lyrics, urgent verse and beatific chorus is a microcosm of the material contained within.
The new album, produced by Dowling and Gerry Horan and engineered by Ger McDonnell (U2, The Cure) is a stately collection of moody, bittersweet indie pop, coming from a place of seasoned maturity, while also allowing for emotional vulnerability in the lyrical content.
All That I Can Do sounds like the unlikely hybrid of Portishead and Adele, a breezy, brisk and energized number that recalls a budding romance at its most passionate, while Trouble mixes skronk guitar and blues shuffle, and the cavernous drums, multi-tracked vocals and spirited melody of Freedom recalls Phil Spector’s wall-of-sound production retrofitted for the 21st century.
Bullet’s slippery main riff meshes well with Dowling’s clear, sonorous vocals, creating a piece full of aural melodrama, whereas I Wanna Dance offers even starker sonics, buttressed by acoustic guitar, and strings.
Romantic longing is a throughline on the album, from the passionate and strident The Fire to the stately dark pop of In The Dark. It helps to encompass a work that feels cinematic in scope, which makes sense given Dowling’s past work has often appeared in television (Banshee, The Witches of East End and How To Get Away With Murder).
I Never Knew marks a different type of love song, with Dowling sharing her affection for an ex-partner. Instead of a bitter breakup song, it’s a warm and peaceful meditation with a mature and sympathetic examination of a past relationship: Does she love you like I meant to?Did you get married and have children…I hope your life’s still exciting.
Animals concludes with the paradoxical titles of Is This Love and Let Love Be, two gorgeous numbers that show romance at its most elastic and mysterious. It ends with the soothing sound of ocean waves, a hypnotic parting gesture which also helps encapsulate the elemental beauty and emotion of the album.
Animals hits all the peaks, valleys and sweet spots that great albums do, and its stately collection of tunes offer soothing and atmospheric delights, making for one of the great late additions to 2021.
