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.
