Track Listing

1. Dead From The Waist Down
2. Londinium
3. She's A Millionaire
4. Storm The Palace
5. Karaoke Queen
6. Bulimic Beats
7. Shoot The Messenger
8. Postscript
9. Valarian Unwanted
10. Nothing Hurts
11. Dazed Beautiful And Bruised

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32334 in Music
• Released on: 1999-04-12
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
If International Velvet was Catatonia exploding into the public sights, Equally Cursed And Blessed is the sound of a band realising what's happened, and as such it is a much more personal album. Opening track "Dead From The Waist Down" is the view of America from a tour bus window, while "Bulimic Beats" is glassily fragile and backs Cerys' voice with a harp. Not that it lacks humour, even given the subject matter; The line "A front line with labels where I witness custard's last stand" shows a continued and healthy approach to taking the piss. In other places, Catatonia stomp in wittily as they always have, particularly with "Londinium" ("I come alive outside the M25") and the wonderful, Clash-tinged "Storm The Palace", an anti-Royalist song suggesting what we can do with the Queen and her house ("Turn it into a bar, let them work in Spar"). Plus, on "She's A Millionaire", Cerys has the best pronunciation of the word gynaecology ever put to record. --Emma Johnston

Customer Reviews

Sublime
I ordered this album without great expectation after seeing an average score of 4 stars here on amazon, but it has greatly exceeded my expectations. In my opinion it's every bit as good as Way Beyond Blue and International Velvet.

As always with Catatonia there's real variety of musical style here, from the ultra pop melodies of Karaoke Queen, Londinium and She's A Millionaire to the more serious and sophisticated Bulimic Beats and Shoot The Messenger and the awesome and powerful Dazed, Beautiful and Bruised, which is possibly Catatonias best piece of music, and would be one of the best songs I've ever heard if it had an extra verse.

As well as the variety there's the same top notch songwriting all the way through the album, and of course Cerys Matthews wonderful voice. Maybe it's not pop enough for some people, but Catatonia albums have always had this same variety. Otherwise I'd have to figure some people made up their minds after only one listen, which doesn't work with any music.

If you like any of the other albums you need to own this one too. Only tiny downside, no welsh language songs.

A Lost Gem
Cataonia's third album must go down in musical history as one of the most maligned releases of all time. Following on the back of their hugely successful 'International Velvet' (an album that was far from perfect itself) expectations were running unbearably high. The band, instead of trying to match 'Velvet's' Britpop thrash and bluster wisely chose melodic introspection and wider, more thoughtful palette of topics.

Sure, the big pop songs were there with 'Londinium', 'She's A Millionaire', 'Karaoke Queen' all crammed with more hooks than a fisherman's kit bag. But it was the the sheer beauty of songs like 'Bulimic Beats' (admittedly a terrible title that did the song no favours), 'Dead From The Waist Down' and 'Nothing Hurts' that melt the heart. 'Valerian' is one of their most lovely melodies set to a gently pulsing beat that showcases Cerys Matthews' vocals perfectly.

The only weak song is the rather formless 'Post Script', but again, it's only because it is set amongst such quality. Maybe it was the unweildy album title or the horrible artwork, but the commonly held view that this is a clunker is woefully wrong.

It's time for a reassessment of a lost gem

The album that killed them.
After "International Velvet" the hype surrounding this album was quite large. It didn't however meet expectations. Whilst "Dead from the Waste Down" and "Londinium" were superb most of the other tracks were quite average or just plain terrible. After this Cataonia never really recovered with third album "Paper, Scissors, Stone" getting virtually no media coverage. If you want real Catatonia buy the greatest hits or even better "International Velvet" which is one of the best albums of the 1990's.