International Velvet is the second album by Welsh band Catatonia. It was the band's breakthrough, reaching number one on the UK Albums Chart and spawning two top 10 singles, "Mulder and Scully" and "Road Rage", and three other top 40 singles, "I Am the Mob", "Game On" and "Strange Glue", as well as catapulting the band and lead singer Cerys Matthews into the spotlight. Album sales reached 900,000, as it became one of the biggest selling albums of 1998 in the United Kingdom. The album was also nominated for the Mercury Music Prize.
Catatonia were originally formed in 1992, with guitarist Mark Roberts and singer Cerys Matthews being part of the band that released the critically acclaimed EPFor Tinkerbell in 1993. Drummer Aled Richards and guitarist Owen Powell joined prior to the release of their first album Way Beyond Blue and the line-up remained the same for International Velvet.[1][2]Warner Bros. Records had intended to release "Lost Cat" from Way Beyond Blue in the United States in 1996, but due to problems at the record label the band had never released anything in the US until International Velvet.[3]
Release
International Velvet was released in the United Kingdom on 2 February 1998, following the earlier releases of both "I Am the Mob" the previous October and "Mulder and Scully" a few days earlier. It was awarded 3× Platinum status by the British Phonographic Industry on 12 November 1999, meaning that in 22 months it had sold over 900,000 copies.[4] The album was Catatonia's first release in the United States by the Vapor label owned by Neil Young, but it did not chart and according to The Washington Post was "overlooked".[5] It was Catatonia's first album release in the United States.[6] The success of the album was seen as launching the band into the public spotlight.[7]
Five singles were released from the album. "I Am the Mob" was released on 6 October 1997 and became their first single to reach the top 40 in the United Kingdom, having reached number 40 on the UK Singles Chart.[8][9] "Mulder and Scully", released on 19 January 1998,[10] became their breakout hit, reaching number three on the chart, and subsequent single "Road Rage" reached number five following its release on 20 April 1998.[9][11] The final two singles did not reach the top ten, with "Strange Glue" (20 July 1998)[12] getting to number 11 and "Game On" (26 October 1998)[13] only reaching number 33.[9] As part of the opening ceremony for the 1999 Rugby World Cup at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, Catatonia performed the title track from the album.[14] That track had become an unofficial Welsh anthem due in part to the chorus "Every day when I wake up I thank the Lord I'm Welsh".[15] To promote the album, the band undertook its biggest tour to date.[7]
NME critic Johnny Cigarettes said that International Velvet showed Catatonia "to be more versatile than you ever thought possible for such a white-bread guitar group", observing a newfound "rough edge" to Matthews's voice that "lends guts" to "out-and-out pop songs" such as "I Am the Mob" and "Road Rage".[20] However, he felt that when Catatonia performed more typical "guitar pop" they lacked excitement.[20]The Washington Post thought that International Velvet was not as consistent as its predecessor but included it in a list of the best albums of 1998.[26]The Independent's Angela Lewis felt the album fulfilled the promise the band had shown for years.[18]
Legacy
In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine found that International Velvet "fails as often as it succeeds" in changing Catatonia's sound from "late-'80s indie pop" to something more akin to hard rock, and cited the "self-conscious" pop culture references in "I Am the Mob" and "Mulder and Scully" as examples of a "weakness for gimmicks".[16] He nonetheless concluded that it "has its fair share of pop delights – it just doesn't deliver as many as Way Beyond Blue".[16]
The album was nominated for the 1998 Mercury Music Prize,[27] which was awarded to Gomez for Bring It On.[28] DJ Steve Lamacq hosted a special on International Velvet on his BBC Radio 6 Music series Classic Albums of the 90s in 2010.[29] The album's title track has since achieved an iconic status within the culture of Wales, being performed at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff for the opening ceremony of the 1999 Rugby World Cup,[30] and representing an important part of the Cool Cymru movement.[31][32][33]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
