Artist

Catherine Wheel

Genre: Alt / Indie ,Alternative Pop/Rock ,Shoegaze
Origin: U.S.A
Active: 1990 - 2000
Listen on Coda
Much like numerous UK guitar groups from the dawn of the 1990s, Catherine Wheel leaned on distortion to generate sonic depth while treating their ethereal singing as a textural element. Although their tunes remain essentially direct, these are buried beneath strata of guitar processing and sustained chordal drones. Comparable to Lush and Ride, Catherine Wheel fashioned concise, hook-driven material from the marriage of melody and static rather than open-ended sonic wanderings. That same approach sparked early attention across Britain for the 1991 EP She's My Friend. Ferment, released the following year, and the 1993 follow-up Chrome both helped the group cultivate a loyal audience at home. The more aggressive rock approach heard on 1995's Happy Days broadened their reach across the Atlantic. A 1996 compilation titled Like Cats and Dogs gathered stray tracks and non-album cuts, after which the quartet delivered their fourth full-length studio effort, Adam and Eve, in 1997. Following a four-year absence from recording, Catherine Wheel returned with Wishville, their debut release on the Columbia imprint.