Fantastic Cat - The Very Best Of Fantastic Cat (2022)

It’s been a while since we last heard a truly great supergroup, a phenomenon that seems to have disappeared as of late. But Fantastic Cat more than making up for the drought with the catchy 10-track The Very Best Of.

The group is comprised of four solid singers: Don DiLego, Anthony D’Amato, Brian Dunne and Mike Montali and the combination of the quartet is wildly addictive, careening in an out of Americana, folk and pop for once of the most impressive debuts so far this year (and I say debut, hoping that this is far from being their only release).

They said it couldn’t be done. Four different songwriters joining forces to form a single band? There was simply no precedent (outside of CSNY, The Beatles, The Traveling Wilburys, The Highwaymen, Monsters of Folk, etc). And yet Fantastic Cat did it anyway, defying the odds and teaming up to record their highly unanticipated debut, The Very Best Of Fantastic Cat, out this summer on Blue Rose Music.

Captured in the wilds of the Pocono Mountains, the album gleefully careens between genres and decades, mixing electrified 60’s folk and 70’s AM radio gold as it balances careful craftsmanship and ecstatic abandon in equal measure.

Individually, each member of Fantastic Cat boasts their own impressive resume along with a litany of critical acclaim. The Guardian dubbed Don DiLego “one to watch.” NPR said Anthony D’Amato “sings and writes in the tradition of Bruce Springsteen or Josh Ritter.” Rolling Stone called Brian Dunne’s latest single a “stunner” and praised Mike Montali’s band, Hollis Brown, as “the soundtrack for a late-night drive through the American heartland.” Collectively, though, the four transcend their respective roots, emerging as an instrument-swapping, harmony-trading, tear-jerking, wise-cracking rock and roll cooperative far greater than the sum of its parts.