A ragged, forlorn cat—fully clothed—comes to, finding himself on the floor of an abandoned warehouse in downtown LA as the harsh, unforgiving sun rises to greet him once again. He kneels, marking this as his ninth and final life, one that he fills dancing for pocket change in Chinatown, contemplating freedom, mortality, and dinner as he gazes at a tank full of goldfish, and finally collapsing in the scrubby in-between urban wilds of the City of Angels, defeated but finally, truly at rest.
Such is the life of Mr. Quiche. According to the official video, at least.
While we wholeheartedly do not support the naming of the new single from LA band, Wildcat! Wildcat!, “Mr. Quiche” does showcase the trio’s quietly beautiful sound wonderfully. We just have an oddly hard time accepting naming conventions that incorporate food. Bleh.
Wildcat! Wildcat! is Jesse Taylor, Michael Wilson, and Jesse Carmichael—three very beardy friends who played together in various incarnations over the years before officially forming W!W! in 2011. With their falsetto melodies, groovy keyboard lines, and light rhythms, the band’s sound can immediately draw comparisons to the softer songs of Passion Pit, MGMT, or even Foster the People. But they thankfully stop short of the more grating, annoying tones or progressions that those bands can sometimes wander into. Wildcat’s sound is more delicate and subtle, reaching more for a well-constructed, mature song than an easy hook and weaving vocal harmonies that almost sound reminiscent of Fleet Foxes or other more vocal-forward groups.
You can download “Mr. Quiche” and watch their video for the song below. Scroll down a little further to check out two more tracks—”End of the World Everyday” + “The Chief”, the latter of which features a pretty sick sax solo. You can purchase a 7″ of “The Chief”/”Mr. Quiche” via Insound.
Wildcat! Wildcat! is just back from supporting the superb Alt-J—who we wrote up last September—and will be playing SXSW this March, and is doing some local LA shows in the coming weeks. Details here.
Side note—you can still listen to and download that Alt-J track on the fall post, but only for the rest of the week as we’ll be cleaning house over the weekend, deleting all 2012 MP3s out of fairness to both the artists and our server. So we encourage you to browse through the archives when you have a chance before all that music bids you a fond farewell.
Now enjoy yourself some “Mr. Quiche”! *shudder*
Photos by Taylor Woods.
