The August List - Wax Cat (2021)

Wax Cat is a thrilling and bizarre concoction of any number of retro influences that gets thrown into a defiantly late 60s mixing desk, sounding somewhere in freak peak San Fran and jumping out in a glorious jumble of melodic chaos. What’s more astonishing is that all of this comes from the imagination of The August List, husband and wife duo Martin and Kerraleigh Child, and emanates from Oxford, this century, rather than the Haight of last. With a finely hewed band of violinist Ben Heaney and a rhythm section of Tommy Longfellow on drums and Ryan Quarterman on bass, they produce a racket that will endear and delight you. No less than Tom Robinson is a fan, comparing them, in part, to a vintage Louisiana jug band: well, that band have moved to the city and gone electric, this being their first release in four years.

With the drums kicking it off, ‘Seams’ opens Wax Cat, a glorious chug and calling card for the swagger that prevails throughout. When Kerraleigh lets fly, here she sounds all the world like Grace Slick. With all sorts of bleep and booster breaking out in the background of the chorus, diverting away from the churning guitar, you know already what a strange trip this may be. By contrast, ‘Puget Sound’ is all slow-burn, leisurely shoegaze of languid strumming, Martin taking the lead, Kerraleigh keening behind, and not always, with him. With each verse building up to a climactic chorus, this is Zuma territory, and I’m loving it.

Released as a single, ‘God is in a Wire’ has Kerraleigh back in a full-throated howl, more swirling effects shimmering as she double tracks herself, a bevy of sirens calling the listener to shore. Perhaps from that Puget sound, I find myself musing.

Martin is back on lead vocal for the more acoustic ‘Lost at Sea’, which adds a further new mood, and is the first rack where Heaney’s violin is, more or less, discernible and adds maritime sway to the proceedings. The aptly titled ‘Distorted Mountain’ is more hues of the desert, the guitar and violin sparring in a mirage of echo and sustain, Kerraleigh sounding ever more banshee-like.

‘I Might Get Low’ is a snappy finger clicker, the geography now entering a Tex-Mex border town where bouffant haired ‘60s girl groups are still a big thing. And in a good way, the surprises this band offer following one after another. This is exemplified by the pure garage band of ‘Wheelhouse”, Martin snarling the vocal, his guitar spitting out fluid spurts of notes. Suddenly, WTF, it’s over, a second under two minutes, needing an instant replay to check out the song for real.

Is that a backwards guitar that opens the final desert sojourn, ‘Crooked Starlite’, a near instrumental, with only some melodic howling audible in the distance? It should be, and even may be, with the array of pedals and effects on the instrumentation to the fore, the violin doing most, if not all, the heavy lifting.

Finally, and if none of this has been weird enough, here comes the closer, a cover, The Diamond Family Archive’s ‘Big Black Dog’, as scary a rendition of an already scary song as you’ll hear all year. Totally unexpected, this sepulchral take is gaunt enough, background sounds bleeding in and building toward a crescendo of ricocheting violin, heavy guitar, together leading the album out in a totally different direction. I can’t think of a more imposing way to end their live set. As in, follow that! Houselights, home in awestruck silence.

I was taken aback by the sheer audacity of this album on first hearing, the kitchen sink of ideas squeezed into the format, only just fitting into the soundscape, the near-collision between the myriad competing forces providing, on repeated listening, a near-perfect record. All credit to Mr and Mrs Child, aided and abetted by the deliberately murky clarity of Richard Neuberg and Rowland Prytherch’s recording.