Cats in Space - Paignton Review

It is great that seeing Cats in Space has essentially become an annual thing since the pandemic. Whilst I first saw the band back in 2017 when they opened for Deep Purple, it was not until 2019 when I finally got into them - and I saw them for the first time on my own terms just before Christmas that year. Clearly 2020 kept the band at home, but since 2021 I have seen them at least once every year - with 2022 being a bumper one as I saw them three times. One of the many great things about the band is the fact that they seem to want to play everywhere - and a trip down to Devon has become something of an annual occurrence, too, which is partly why I have been able to see them so many times. They played The Wharf in Tavistock in 2019 and 2022 - but since then their Devon venue of choice has been the Palace Theatre in Paignton. The somewhat rundown seaside town is not exactly a hotbed of live music so, on the surface, the choice to play there seems a strange one. I think the band initially chose the venue last year as they wanted to play a tour of smaller theatres, which The Wharf could not be described as, many of which ended up being in somewhat unusual places - so I can only imagine that the band enjoyed their first trip to Paignton last year and decided to return this year. This year's tour, supporting the release of sixth album Time Machine which drops later in the month, saw the band move back some more familiar rock venues - with some of the theatres played last year visited again. Given The Wharf was not booked last night and the fact that it is a more established and visited venue it may have made more sense to return to Tavistock - but I can only assume that there is something about Paignton which made the band return, and I think that there was a larger crowd in the house last night than there had been last year. In truth, none of the band's Devon shows have ever been bursting at the seams crowd-wise. It is a shame, but it is not uncommon in this part of the world for newer bands - but I do think that each time the band has returned to each respective Devon venue the turnout has increased. Bands like Cats in Space just have to keep plugging away at it - and they seem to have both the talent and the stubbornness to keep going until each venue is full to bursting. I will keep returning as long as they keep coming back - so it was a post-work drive over to Paignton which took place yesterday evening, followed by some dinner in the nearby Wetherspoons. Paignton is really not a particularly exciting place, and half the town was likely in the Wetherspoons. It was rammed, as was the case last time, too, and it is a shame that a few more in there did not decide to spend a night in the Palace Theatre afterwards. The theatre itself is quite decent. It is small, but it has a good-sized stage and the sound last night was very good despite the small sound system - as was also the case last year. In fact, the two shows were almost exactly a year apart, with last year's trip to Devon taking place at the end of September.

Unlike last year, though, this show was a more tradition one with a support act. Last year's tour saw the band perform 'Evening with...' type shows - with no support act and a much longer setlist. This produced the excellent live album Fire in the Night, but I imagine such shows are quite draining - so a return to a more typical-length show was, sadly, always likely. Opening the show, then, was Willie Dowling - whom I had seen earlier in the year both opening for and playing with The Quireboys. He seems to be a member of that band now, and he has a varied history with a number of bands such as The Grip, The Wildhearts, and Honeycrack - among others. His latest venture, though, is piano-led pop songs - and the set he performed last night with bassist Andy Lewis was very similar to the one he played in Swansea back in May with The Quireboys. He will be opening for (and playing with) The Quireboys again when I see them in Bridgwater in November, so I imagine that I will see this set for a third time, but I have to say that Dowling's style is growing on me. I remember enjoying some of his songs previously, but finding his between-song banter a bit much. I am not someone who thinks that politics should be kept out of music, and people can say what they want in my opinion, but some of his banter last time was student-level cliché in the everyone-who-disagrees-with-me-is-an-actual-fascist manner which has sadly become to prevalent in today's political discourse. He toned that down somewhat this time, and was actually a little cleverer in introducing his songs, so I found myself enjoying his set more as I spent less time rolling my eyes - despite not always disagreeing with the messages in his songs. Sometimes the way a message is delivered can undermine it - and life is always much more nuanced than idealists would have you believe. Moving on, then, I generally enjoyed Dowling's set last night. It is a shame that he could not bring a full band with him, meaning that he had pre-recorded drums and likely some other bits, too, but his piano playing was great and he has a knack for crafting a strong vocal hook. His songs are memorable in that whimsical power pop manner and his lyric writing is generally pretty clever, too, and much less ham-fisted than some of his banter would have you believe. He has such a huge history in music by this point that it is hard to know where to start with his work - but there is clearly a lot to like there, and I imagine at some point I will investigate further.

With a 10pm curfew seemingly in force, there was very little hanging around during the evening. It was not long at all following Dowling's set that Cats in Space hit the stage at 8:30pm - and the next 90 minutes were packed with the band trademark melodic hard rock. With the setlist over the last couple of years being dominated by material from 2022's Kickstart the Sun (which I reviewed here), and the 2023 tour setlist being a real career retrospective - I was pleased to see the setlist was pretty different this time around. Five songs from the upcoming album were included, and they slotted in nicely alongside some established live favourites and a couple of deeper cuts. A few songs were given a well-deserved rest, too, and the setlist flowed nicely - kicking off with one of the band's true anthems Too Many Gods. The band's current line-up, which has been in place since 2021 now, is a real hard rock unit. Frontman Damien Edwards goes from strength to strength as both a singer and a frontman - with the rest of the band as tight and lush as ever. The stage set was perhaps a little stripped back compared to last year's big effort - but it still looked great, and it shows what can be done when everyone pulls together. The crowd were very vocal, too, and the atmosphere was excellent throughout - with the new tracks being received as well as the classics. The title track of the new album followed Too Many Gods, with the mid-paced anthemic piece immediately sounding at home in the set. Some of the new material played felt a little more laid back than is typical, but Time Machine rocked hard - and it has a chorus which is sure to win over everyone. A somewhat deeper cut in Clown in Your Nightmare was then thrown in - and it was one I had not seen the band do live before. It is an upbeat and poppy track, but the strong keyboard playing of Andy Stewart and some wah-drenched guitars from Greg Hart certainly helped it to stand out.

It was the new material that interested me the most, though. Crashing Down and This Velvet Rush came fairly early on - and both were grand-sounding semi-ballads which built to big crescendos. The former was somewhat typical, but the latter took some different paths I think - with some excellent yacht rock-esque keyboard textures woven around the band's usual harder rock edge. The instrumental piece Broken Hearted, which featured on the live album, was sandwiched between the two - and had to be restarted due to Dean Howard's (guitar/vocals) pedalboard playing up. Perhaps my favourite of the new tracks played, though, was Immortal - a melodic hard rocker which sparkled with Boston-esque energy. Of all the new choruses I heard last night it was the hookiest - and the song feels like it is destined to be a real crowd favourite going forward. The final new track played was Occam's Razor (Not the End of the World), another up-tempo rocker, but it perhaps suffered from following the masterful Bootleg Bandoleros from the previous album - the band's most ambitious piece to date. It was great to hear the lengthy epic live again and it is a song which shows that Cats in Space are not just about three minute singles. By this point, though, the evening very much returned to familiar territory - with a three song suite of classics to round out the main set. The funky Thunder in the Night saw bassist Jeff Brown taking the lead with a prominent bassline - whilst the piano-driven pomp of The Mad Hatter's Tea Party and the epic Greatest Story Never Told, sung perfectly by Edwards and Brown as always, brought things to a close with many up and dancing in the isles. A two-song encore followed, though, and two more favourites were thrown at the expectant and hungry crowd - with the harder rock of Hologram Man and the dynamic I Fell Out of Love with Rock 'n' Roll bringing an excellent evening of melodic hard rock to a close. The setlist was:

Too Many Gods

Time Machine

Clown in Your Nightmare

Kickstart the Sun

Crashing Down

Broken Hearted

This Velvet Rush

Immortal

Bootleg Bandoleros

Occam's Razor (Not the End of the World)

Thunder in the Night

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

Greatest Story Never Told

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Hologram Man

I Fell Out of Love with Rock 'n' Roll

Seeing Cats in Space live is always a real event and it has been great seeing them so often in recent years. The band go from strength to strength and I am really looking forward to hearing Time Machine when it drops later this month. Signed to a label now, so with better distribution, I hope that this will be where the band can really kick on. They are the sort of band that many people would like if they actually heard their songs - and I am sure that this upcoming sixth album will be as good as the other five, with the new material played last night certainly only increasing my overall excitement.