The future of the past looks a lot cooler than the present. Where are the hover-cars and space colonies we were promised in 50s and 60s Futurist films and literature? Are TiVo and bagless vacuum cleaners the best we have to show for two centuries of industrial revolution? I dare say, reality has been greatly shown up by the imaginations of people who wrote and directed fifty years ago.
We do have ways to access the future of the past today, though: Disney's Epcot Center is a huge, overpriced monument to unrealized technological ambition; goofball "future music" recordings by the likes of Perrey & Kingsley and Peter Thomas have been made available on compact disc (with modern mastering technology revealing limitations in the source tape, no less); and every utopian and cautionary sci-fi movie ever made is out on DVD, whether or not it deserves to be. We even have modern acts like Stereolab and The Swirlies, who insist that the future of the past actually did arrive, with their analog soundtracks to space station lounge scenes and meetings in edgeless, woodless buildings with minimal decor.
The Swirlies weren't always so bent on retro-futurism, but the obsession was always present, whether as an undercurrent. With Cats of the Wild, Volume Two, however, the band members throw themselves into straight-up homage, despite that the lounge craze it would have sounded so tight in hung up its smoking jacket for good almost ten years ago.
Cats of the Wild, Volume Two (there is no Volume One) is kind of The Swirlies' seventh album-- though it's actually more like a seven-song EP with 20 minutes of aimless noise tacked on at the end-- and it perfectly embodies the old vision of what the turn of the 21st Century was supposed to look like. The record swims in squiggling electronic noise and quasi-futuristic noisemaking, but like a string holding up an Ed Wood spaceship, its noisy, lo-fi sheen gives away its present-day creation.
For all their playful experimentalism, The Swirlies remain, to this day, essentially a shoegazer band that strayed into a European electronics boutique. Longtime Swirly Damon Tutunjian keeps the lead mic to himself on each of these songs, but Swirlies old and new pop up all over the record to lend support; the liners list (almost illegibly) a total of 15 members playing on the album. That's a lot of Swirlies, and sometimes, it's apparent that too many cooks were crammed in the kitchen at once, as the instrumental clutter is often overwhelming.
You still get some old-style blasts of Swirly goodness, though. That's Seana Carmody lending her fetching croon to the background of opener "One Light Flashing I Love You", the track's bright synth melodies floating above the overdriven beats and messy guitar parts like an olive in a martini, and sloppy guitar parts grinding against the facade while Tutunjian's faux-British accent strives to rise above it all. "Le Bag" is a slinky noir thriller strewn with percussive clutter and clean guitar chords bent in half by tremolo bars. And "Sleepytime" kills its melody with blasts of horrendous, tuneless distortion, yet somehow comes out all the better for it, despite bordering on being a bit overlong.
Even with some choice moments, though, it's difficult to say that Cats of the Wild is really worth it for anyone but a true Swirlies devotee. And, of course, even they won't likely be listening to that aforementioned, ridiculously unnecessary (if aptly titled) 20-minute closer "Cats of the Wild Forever". 13 years into their indie rock career, The Swirlies still haven't topped their second full-length, 1993's fantastic Blonder Tongue Audio Baton. So maybe the future of the past doesn't look so great after all. If you need to reminisce on what might have been, there are better retro-future documents out there than this one.
