Monster Cat in concert | 3.5/5

SINGAPORE — After a successful stint opening for British outfit Foals in Kuala Lumpur and touring several cities in China, Singapore band MONSTER CAT had a triumphant homecoming with the official launch of its debut album, The Violet Hour, at the Aliwal Arts Centre last week.

In attendance were a veritable “who’s who” of the local indie music scene — from Charlie Lim to The Sam Willows — although a sizeable portion of the audience provided clear evidence of MONSTER CAT’s burgeoning fan base and the appeal that local indie music is exerting on younger Singaporeans. Particularly revealing was the venue itself, the main hall at the Aliwal Arts Centre — which has been somewhat under-utilised by the local indie music scene but is definitely an alternative for the venue-starved scene. While the hall was not packed, it was sufficiently filled for the occupants to enjoy a concert-like atmosphere that added to the overall enjoyment of the launch event.

Throughout the set, the band went about their business with little fanfare or fuss and focused instead on the music. Drawing primarily from material from The Violet Hour and their debut EP, Mannequins, the band faithfully reproduced the dense, texturally sophisticated music that had become the band’s calling card. Although the opening song, Take Me To Love, possessed a certain funky vibe with a simple catchy refrain, by and large, the bulk of MONSTER CAT’s songwriting involved melodies that did not invite audience sing-alongs. Which probably accounted for the night’s gentle swaying and conservative head bopping.

With a colourful light show supporting them, MONSTER CAT —Hentai Cat, Psycho Cat and Meta Cat, with Shaun Soh on guitar and Jeremiah Elijah on bass — created sonic moods and emotional ambience through words and music, as their enlightened arrangements and instrumentation kept things intriguing, especially on songs like Mother, Spiders, Salem and Tower.

The band’s vocalists, Hentai Cat and Psycho Cat, delivered lead and harmony vocals that were edgy and arty — and never settled on something conveniently conventional. However, when the duo stripped down to the bare essentials of voice and guitar on Knife Through Water (with violin accompaniment from the talented Josh Wei, who arranged the string parts for the show) and Pockets (All That I Have), they demonstrated that their songs were not merely the clever results of sound effects and gimmickry, but communicated shade and tone equally well in an acoustic setting.

It should be noted that the band’s stage presence itself was somewhat muted. While this might possibly have more to do with the size of the stage itself than anything else, one could not help noticing that on stage, there was an awkwardness in their presentation, although Hentai Cat tried his best to engage the audience as a frontman. However, everyone agreed that the band were incredibly tight, hitting all the cues perfectly, obviously benefiting from being on the road in China. By all accounts, an immensely successful night for Singapore indie rock. Kevin Mathews