Mute
	(Setanta/LP/CD)
	n/a

Catchers sigh and swoop and dream and plunder and reinvent the three-minute jangle (of nerves) pop format with the kind of easy glee granted only to The Chosen Ones. They fuse mirth to melancholy in an aching music whose driving pulse is an insatiable, irreducible yearning. They are very special. The chintzily named Alice Lemon supplies the requisite vocals-from-the-next-cosmos but Catchers' true genius is Dale Grundle, a skinny poet/guitarist so alive to the purity of his role that he refuses to sully it by participating in anything so vulgar as an interview. His words are fragile, moving, implication-heavy - "Sprawled out over the windfall/Of this the bloated, browning month/Apple bruises on my thighs/And the flush from your yawning smile". He coaxes language into scheming shapes like a crafty cherub. Catchers' highlight remains the phantom giddy yearning of "Cotton Dress", a hymn to mortality and a previous Maker Single Of The Week: their other highlights are every other moment on this astonishing, sparkling debut. They've dream-wished into life a record of incandescent beauty and gentle rage. "Mute", indeed, robs me of speech: it steals my breath. A jewel from nothing, from nowhere; if the world takes note (and it will,it will) and interferes, Catchers may never be allowed to be this unearthly again. Truly wonderful.