William Benton – Queen City Sounds and Art

CatCasualAndTheFinalWord1_lg — Cat Casual & The Final Word, photo courtesy the artist

Cat Casual & The Final Word’s “Asphalt” sounds like an artifact from the early 80s when the music world hadn’t completely sorted out where the line between post-punk, psychedelia, New Wave and power pop lay. The urgent, clipped rhythm guitar riff, tripped out keyboard work, William Benton’s impassioned vocals and serpentine and fiery guitar solo at the end sound like the band has deconstructed the modern instinct for tapping into music’s past not to cop a classic aesthetic so much as to create something different inspired by music from a time before everything popular in the mainstream was somewhat a product of mediated tastes. This gives the song and the band’s sound in general a certain freshness along with an air of the classic. Listen on YouTube as well as watch the performance video and follow Cat Casual & The Final Word at the links below.