The way it usually works is that people send me stuff, you know PR’s and the like. Hundreds and hundreds of emails per day, that I trawl though and have the unenviable task of picking what to write about, or to ask other people to write about. What’s not usual is that I accidentally hear something on soundcloud, while looking for something else, and be so transfixed by it that I feel compelled to write about it. Step forward Soft Cat.
It appears from my rudimentary investigations that Soft Cat is essentially the Baltimore singer songwriter Neil Sanzgiri along with Brendan Sullivan, Evan Merkel and Katelyn Jarkowiec, and a wider revolving cast of extras and musicians. They have a forthcoming album, and from it he’s/they’re streaming a second single, Diana.
It flutters into life, this little butterfly of acoustic indie fluttering away, as these sweeping cymbal swells and steel guitar wails give it an earthy ambience. Apart from the clear guitar and the piano figures, everything else runs together into a kind of beautifully misty mass. It shimmers and sparkles with ghostly contributions from brass and strings, while the vocals, almost always harmonised, sway gently in the middle ground.
Its bewitching, beautiful and brilliant.
https://www.facebook.com/softcatbaltimore
