Though they released
Dancing for Decadence on Fat Wreck,
the Sainte Catherines could just have easily fit among the catalog over at No Idea Records, as at times they sound like a less poppy version of
Gunmoll or a more straightforward version of
Planes Mistaken for Stars. (Or really, just take your pick of whatever aggressive punk band with gritty vocals you'd like to fill in the blank). The album is chock-full of super-charged, uncompromising, no-frills hardcore with an impassioned D.I.Y. attitude that borders on a street punk frame of mind (but minus the standard accompanying "Oi!"s or liberty spikes). As a band sporting three guitarists,
the Sainte Catherines play fast, they play hard, and they don't really deviate much from this direct approach. They are the band for the rebellious, left-wing, grassroots activists who, though they may spend their evenings drunk in the grimy bars of the world, also possess an unexpected softer side as well. After all, the compelling "Burn Guelph Burn" simultaneously sports lines like "Send the rich kids to war and keep the poor at home," while saying "I love the way your eyes turned red when city hall burned bright." This juxtaposition of radicalism and sentimentality in vocalist
Hugo Mudie's sociopolitical lyrics is present throughout the album's half-hour run -- seen further in the driving and passionate "Confession of a Revolutionary Bourgeois, Pt. 3" ("I don't like what's pretty, I like what's real/What about finding beauty where it's not supposed to be?") and the surging, guitar-driven "I'd Rather Be Part of the Dying Bungee Scene" ("I'm waiting for my love alone/Will revolution save my soul?"). One of the more notable tracks is the frank nostalgia of "The Shape of Drunks to Come," where
Against Me!'s
Tom Gabel contributes some terrific guest vocals. The sensitive side of the band gives them a much more human feel than simply being another pissed off, radical hardcore act, but unfortunately, the somewhat uniform nature of the music doesn't always do much to make their otherwise passionate songs that memorable. Such is the nature of a lot of this genre, though, and thus makes
the Catherines' fervent delivery -- if not the actual music -- alone worthy of at least a few spins. ~ Corey Apar