Catalina caper

Here's another piece on a band that broke up not too long after I wrote about them. Poor, poor Salena Catalina. They were quite talented, actually.

So who will be the next victim of my curse? I'd put my money on Barry Glenn Davis. His label seems to have folded, and the contact info for both him and his Denis Learyesque-looking manager has yielded nothing. Is he still in the game? Haven't a clue.

RECORD REVIEW: SALENA CATALINA

By David O'Connell

(published October 23, 2003 in The York Dispatch)

How do I describe a relatively unknown band to thee? Let me count the ways. One trick is to reduce the band's identity to the end result of a pseudo-algebraic equation. If you like bands A and B, the reasoning goes, then you will just absolutely love this brand new band C that I am going to tell you all about, for they sound exactly like bands A and B put together. Of course, this method is only truly effective if the bands being referenced enjoy a large measure of popularity and/or infamy. So if Salena Catalina, a relatively unknown Pittsburgh-based quartet led by York Suburban graduate Lexi Rebert, combines the drugged-out experimentation of mid-60s Beatles with the new age stylings of Mr. John Tesh, then you, the music writer, have it made. As an added bonus, it affords you the opportunity to include a John Tesh 'large forehead' joke somewhere in your review, and those are always fun to do.

However, if Salena Catalina instead combines the sassy vocal stylings of Save Ferris with the wiry-sounding jazz-rock interplay of Soul Coughing, a comparison that is closer to reality, then you have raised more questions than you have answered. Questions such as: Just who is Soul Coughing, anyway? (Answer: A New York City band who released three records in the '90s, broke through at alternative radio in 1998 with the top 10 hit "Circles," and split up soon after.) Or: Yeah, I know who Soul Coughing is! They did that "Runaway Train" song, right? (Answer: No. You are thinking of Soul Asylum.) And: Hey, wasn't Save Ferris the slogan used in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off? (Answer: Yes. But a ska band adopted it as their moniker, and scored an alternative radio hit six years ago with a cover of Dexy’s Midnight Runners' "Come On Eileen.") To go such a route will likely distract your readership into fondly reminiscing about the 1986 hit movie that catapulted Matthew Broderick to stardom, and not giving a second thought to two cult bands they probably have never heard of anyway.

If the writer is of the deferential sort, he can always let the band and their associates pin the label on themselves. Salena Catalina bassist and primary songwriter Pete Bush attempted such a feat when a writer from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asked him to describe the band’s music. "It’s the hardest question in the world for us to answer, because we have jazzy elements that I guess give it a slight jazz sound." he said. "But there’s kind of a pop catch to it there somewhere, and those old sex-jazz song cover versions we started out with is the sex thing in the whole jazz-sex-pop or however we’ve been describing ourselves."

I couldn't have said it more tentatively myself. In an early band bio, publicist Sean Enright dispensed with the kind-of's and the I guess's and offered up this description: "More than a band, they are a vibrant musical lapdance." A colorful way of putting it, and there certainly is a 'come-hither' element to Lexi’s vocals, but only a morbid stripper would inject words like "schizophrenic," "forensics," and "poisoned tree" into her sex talk. Also, I think Lexi might be a little too brainy and wordy to fit the aural sex kitten role that Sean has created for her. (Perhaps it gets harder to completely shut one's brain off when you are the daughter of a lawyer---in this case, York County District Attorney H. Stanley Rebert.)

More than that, Sean does Salena Catalina a mild disservice by placing the sexual overtones ahead of the music, which cannot be described adequately using the above models. For instance, take the song "Silky Smooth," which appears on their debut CD, Feel Like A Good Girl. It begins with a little in-joke: a short snippet of the band performing an old jazz number called "She Ain’t Much Of A Wrestler, But You Ought To See Her Box," a nod to their risque novelty jazz days. Eleven seconds in, the swinging stops, Bush’s fuzz-bass kicks in, and chaos ensues, with keyboardist Jen Catalina launching into a series of air raid siren keyboard parts as Lexi coolly strolls in and deftly drops a series of rat-a-tat lines that make her sound like a film-noir actress drunk on free association. One verse finds her in the 1940s, walking through the streets of an unnamed city, and consorting with politicians, while the futuristic second verse sends Lexi on a rocket trip to one of Saturn’s moons, then over to the Sun, and finally back to Earth, re-entering the atmosphere somewhere over South America. After a few slow/fast dynamic shifts, the song winds to a close with an extended electric piano solo reminiscent of the one that capped off Faith No More’s 1990 hit "Epic." It’s an incredibly dizzying, tremendously exciting song, and the musicianship on display clearly trumps whatever prurient interest one might be able to find in it.

So based on this one track, I could say that Salena Catalina equals Faith No More plus Ben Folds Five, but that sort of shorthand would be misleading, since they don’t sound like either group on any other song. It really doesn't even work for the song itself, as parts of it sound like neither of the two groups, and the Ben Folds reference pertains to the way a specific instrument is played, not to the overall sound or the band's compositional style. The jazz/sex/pop description really falls short when it comes to a song like "Fly Away Bird," which is neither sexy (a male band member handles the vocal duties in a decidedly non-lusty manner), nor explicitly jazzy. A detailed track-by-track description of the music and lyrics might suffice, although it would be easier for one to listen to the CD, and experience their uniqueness without labels getting too much in the way.

More info on Salena Catalina can be found at SalenaCatalina.com.

-Dave O'Connell