Catfish Haven, Tell Me

reviewed by dave heaton

The Chicago-based band Catfish Haven open their debut album Tell Me with a kick-ass channeling of an Otis Redding or Sam Cooke-style soul song – not a ballad but one of those everybody-on-the-dancefloor jams that inside is one giant teardrop. The title is "I Don't Worry" but there's worry inside; it's a break-up song tilted into a promise not to feel hurt, an attempted message of joy. And it rocks, captures that same upward movement that instantly makes you want to dance.

The first half of Tell Me is loaded with that sort of song, and each one hits all the right notes. The group's singer, and songwriter, George Hunter, sings his heart out – he doesn't have a smooth voice, it's ragged and worn, but that fits these heartbreak songs perfectly. "Crazy for Leaving" should be a hit, if songs rough like this could be hits these days. In any case, Billboard charts or no, it swoons and shakes in an infectious, play-me-over-and-over-again way, while of course being an absolutely heartwrenching song of regrets and sadness. Following it, "All I Need Is You" makes the perfect complement, taking the energy up a notch and shifting the emphasis towards love and acceptance and devotion and joy. "Another Late Night" falls in the same place, wonderfully.

As Tell Me proceeds, it shifts into slower material, both heartfelt ballads again evocative of Redding and Cooke, like "Down by Your Fire," and songs that dip into a bluesy middle territory, expanding and allowing Hunter to slow down and concentrate on the feeling of each line, on that feeling of sadness and contemplation. Some feel more meandering than others, and none contain the immediacy of the great dance-floor numbers that precede it, but they're part of the balance, part of the overall story of love and hurt and hope and pain that Tell Me is telling.

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