Review by AVA LIVERSIDGE
Delhi’s finest, the Peter Cat Recording Co., follow up on two celebrated releases and worldwide tours with LP BETA — an assertion that this quintet has confidently settled into their freewheeling pop.
A capricious melange of thunderstorms, distorted wind chimes, and soaring horn sections opens the record, promising from the get that this third release will be their liveliest yet. And Peter Cat Recording Co follows through.
LP BETA is a vast tapestry of sun-dipped vocals, eruptive clammors, noise for noise’s sake, moments of silence, wandering sitar interludes, and white noise. The delicate harmonic traces that flutter about “Flowers R. Blooming” breaks down into a thumping groove on “People Never Change” and again morphs into a smooth showtune on “Suddenly.”
The record is as ambitious as it is cohesive. PCR’s own Suryakant Sawhney, Kartik Pillai and Dhruv Bhola produced the genre-bending 13-track collection with the intention of letting the music speak for itself—giving the sound space to explore the unexpected. They were able to make room for bouncy bossa nova tunes like “Seed” and noisy shoegazers like “Black and White.”
Silky vocal harmonies, whimsical wind sections, and jazzy synth arrangements all find home on the album’s second half. Their maximalism yields vibrancy but is done so with such tact that their sound never becomes sludge. Comparatively austere indie rock cuts like “I Deny Me” and “A Beautiful Life” temper their neighboring romps.
The group boasts their versatility by embracing their more psychedelic inclinations. That is, on BETA, Peter Cat Recording Co. proved that they can do more—create more expansively—without getting lost in the layers of their creation. Hear it for yourself on BETA and catch the Peter Cat Recording Co. as they embark on their tour of the US, UK, and India.
Listen to BETA here:
