EP Review: Wild Cat Strike – Mustard Coloured Years

You know that guy at the party, the mild-mannered one with the notebook and the messenger bag that you think may have been someone’s boyfriend once but you’re not sure? That’s Brighton four-piece Wild Cat Strike: out of the mainstream but not quite obtuse enough to be fatally socially awkward. Mustard Coloured Years is, however, an awkward document. It’s almost as if the songwriting process filters out the obvious, the overly cheesy, and constructs and arranges the song in fragments. It’s very like the bold portrait that, on close examination, is composed of thousands of details smaller pictures. Mustard Coloured Years is like that. It is sonic and lyrical fragments crafted into songs. Opening track Mustard begins as a wistful and sparkling mid-tempo waltz. As...