Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

A singular mood will not carry you far, it will become a box in which others will find easy to place you in and keep you tied to their expectation of attitude, the vein in which our words will become a crawl and the music you make nothing more than a howl of temper and sentiment of continuous irritation.

One mood is bad form, but to be able to capture the essence of every possible disposition, the humour and the passion of the cycle that can become uncontainable and far-reaching emotion, that is the place where the box converts to a state of redundancy, where the artist is transformed and develops a style that is its own unique joy.

It might come as a shock to some, but being able to experience the full spectrum of emotions is not a sign of a mind that cannot contemplate peace, rather it is a mind that seeks adventure, of benefitting from being able to conceive every possible turn to which the human spirit demands, and then using them to form that which separates us from the Animals, that in which art, artistry, and expression of will and determination can be framed as one that inspires to greatness.

So, it falls to the genius within Cat Dowling and the evocative voice of Irish music that Animals is given the place it deserves, one that is at the forefront of intimacy, overwhelming desire, anger, rage, beauty, fear, and of continuance in the face of other’s misplaced ire and badly developed sense of humanity. It is this continuance that controls the listener, commands that the feral awakening is one of authority and calm, that whilst the fur bristles and the hiss is audibly heard as the nature of rules and policy rubs the sensitive and the profound up the wrong way, there is still a measure of tranquillity to be found in the art and its maker.

Across tracks such as All That I Can Do, Freedom, Bullets, the firecracker of I Wanna Dance, I Never Knew, let Love Be, and the album title track of Animals, intimacy is what purrs down the ears and inflames the soul. For in a period of self-reflection, where to draw breath in amongst the chaos of the plastic falseness of the forced serene, Cat Dowling stands out as one of authenticity, faithful to the cause, and steeped in genuine dependability.

A single mood will catch the attention, but to be able to convey all and every expression will be the accurate depiction of what it means to feel human. A bold and gracious album, Cat Dowling’s Animals is simply a creature of tremendous worth. 

Ian D. Hall