Last month while at Timbrrr! Winter Music Fest in Leavenworth I found my new favorite Seattle band, Cataldo. I am ashamed to say I hadn’t even heard of these guys before that show. Thoughtfully catchy pop songs with fantastic lyrics and a great horn section. I went right for the merch table to find no merch. I couldn’t buy those songs I had just fallen in love with.
That all changes tonight when Cataldo holds the release party for their fourth album, Gilded Oldies, at the Tractor Tavern in Ballard.
After making his third record Prison Boxing and playing those songs for two years, Cataldo front man Eric Anderson wanted to take some time off to really focus on this new album.
“I found myself in a position where I could keep on playing a show every four weeks and I just didn’t want to do it because I didn’t have anything interesting to say. So I took a year and just wanted to shut up and figure out what I wanted to say” said Anderson.
After taking this time he was ready to start working on his next album. Anderson sat down and explained the concept for the album to his roommate who heard him out and then changed those plans by asking one simple question.
“Absent what is convenient, what do you WANT to do?” he asked Anderson.
“I off the cuff described more or less exactly what I did for this record” Anderson said.
This was an ambitious task considering it involved getting eight excellent musicians all on the same page with the vision, but that’s exactly what happened.
“I felt like I knew my tools for the first time” Anderson said when asked how making this record was different from the past. The finished product is proof of that.
There isn’t anything to discuss here. Gilded Oldies is a masterpiece. It doesn’t sound like anything else coming out of Seattle right now and in just one live set Cataldo went from a band that wasn’t on my radar to the band who was about to release the album I am anticipating most in 2014.
You can stream Gilded Oldies below and if you like what you hear (which you should) there are still some tickets available for their show at the Tractor tonight.
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