Cathode Ray - Interview

  by John Clarkson

published: 8 / 7 / 2025

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Article

One of the most durable and diverse of all Scottish bands,The Cathode Ray set out in 2006 with the initial manifesto of marrying the sound of late 70’s New York and bands like Television and The Heartbreakers with that of late 70’s Manchester and groups such as Magazine, Joy Division and The Fall. It was formed by Jeremy Thoms, an Aberdeen-born singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who had moved to Edinburgh in the early 1980s and played in a variety of its indie groups (The Revillos, The Naturals, The Strawberry Tarts, New Leaf), with Paul Haig, the former frontman with the short-lived but seminal Josef K. When Haig dropped out of The Cathode Ray after it had recorded its first two singles, ‘What’s It All About?’ (2008) and ‘Slipping Away’ (2009), Thoms carried on with what until now had been until now a studio project, turning inro a live act with its other two members, bassist Neil Baldwin (TV21, The Bluebells) and drummee/percissionist David Mack (New Leaf), and new guitarist Steve Fraser (The Scars, Mike Scott). The Cathode Ray’s 2012 self-titled debut album maintained its original blueprint and was well-received, but its second album, ‘Infinite Variery’ (2015), as implied by its title and remarkable gatefold sleeve cover which featured 40 types of flowers and orchids, had a much wider template and, as well as post-punk, also had elements of pop, psychedelia and krautrock, A third album ‘Heightened Senses’’ (2020) further extended on this, and successfully also included reggae, folk, glam rock and disco -influenced tracks. The Cathode Ray released its fourth and latest album. ‘Advance Retreat’, at the end of last year. It looks back to The Cathode Ray’s early roots with the sinister, paranoiac ‘Cross Purposes’ and the abrasive jangle of ‘Eventually’. Recent single and stand-out track, the breezy ‘Travelling in Style’ – possibly Jeremy Thoms’ finest work-to-date as a songwriter yet – is, however, a glorious and seductive pop number that imagines Utopia. Halcyon Days’ -all whirlpooling, distorted My Bloody Valentine guitars – reflects on better days and more innocent times. The catchy, melody-driven ‘Consequences’ has a classic pop sound, while the final track ‘Holy Grail’, which is built around a stark keyboard sound before moving dreamily upwards, has an element of the songwriting of Burt Bacharach. ‘Advance Retreat’ finds The Cathode Ray moving forwards in other directions as well. All The Cathode Ray’s other albums have come out on Thoms’ own label Stereogram Recordings (James King and The Lonewolves, The Eastern Swell, Chris Reeve, STOOR, Roy Moller, St Christopher Medal, The Band of Holy Joy), but this is a co-release with the larger and increasingly influential label Last Night From Glasgow (The Skids, The Armory Show, The Bathers, The Cowboy Mouth, Peter Capaldi, Constant Follower, Starless, Davey Woodward).. There have been developments in the line-up as well. Guitarist Phil Biggs, who like David Mack lives in North Yorkshire, joined the Cathode Ray during the recording of ‘Heightened Senses’, to fill in for Steve Fraser, who plays with various other groups including much-in-demand Blondie tribute group Dirty Harry and is not always available. Biggs has a larger role on ‘Advance Retreat’, While he appears on the new record, Neil Baldwin has also had to take hop an extended sabbatical from The Cathode Ray for personal reasons and , while he will hopefully appear on future recordings, his place has been filled for live work at leasy by Sean Allison. In what is our sixth interview with him, we met with Jeremy Thoms in a coffee shop in Edinburgh and spoke to him about ‘Advance Retreat’. PB: Why did you call your new album ‘Advance Retreat’? That’s a bit of a play on words. JT: It is a funny thing. That is a phrase that I have always thought that is more popular than it actually turned out to be, it is one that I have always known, but it is a method of dealing with people. I am always trying to find something which is a bit unusual and different when it comes to album titles, and I lwas absolutely amazed to see that it had never been used before. With the millions of album titles out there, you would do anything to make yourself stand out (Laughs). PB: What does that title mean to you? JT: It means for me two things. The normal meaning for ‘Advance Retreat’ is that you are not going in with guns blazing and in fact you get more done by holding back, but to me it had a double meaning. When I was demoing the songs for me and before I had the title I felt that the mixture of going forward and also harking back at the same time. The ‘Advance’ was new areas which we hadn’t gone into as a band before, and the ‘Retreat’ was songs that maybe had an element of tracks that appeared on the previous records. PB: ‘Heightened Senses’ must have been a disappointment to you because vey shortly after it came out and before you had the chance to really promote it there was lockdown and, like a lot of the records that came lout at that time, it got lost. JT: Yes. The way I am looking at now is that on the back of ‘Advance Retreat’ people have gone back to it and are now discovering it. It was annoying though because we had literally launched the album and done a few dates in January 2020, and then that was it (Laughs). PB: Was lockdown a creative time for you? JT: Yes, it was. I think a lot of creative folk at one level quite enjoyed it. What happened was, i disciplined myself (Laughs). My wife was working from home in the front room. My youngest son was still at school and was doing homework in his bedroom, and I sat in the kitchen with my cassette recorder, and I wrote the tunes for ‘Advance Retreat’. It was done very much in a Brill Building style (Laughs). I was very focused. There were no distractions. PB: At what point did the band come in? JT: It was quite a lot later on. Normally, we would have been rehearsing it and demoing it and playing some of the songs at gigs. We normally introduce songs as they come in. The process is that I normally do quite detailed demos and then send my initial demos to everyone so they know the tunes. When Dave the drummer was ready, he recorded the drum bits for the first few songs in his home studio and sent them up. Then in the spring of 2022 I went down to where he lives in Yorkshire and started recording it properly. Then eventually the nucleus of the band – Dave, Phil and myself – recorded about half the album down there with me on bass, and I brought it back to Steve and Neil, who recorded their contributions iin Edinburgh. It is a like The Beatles’ ‘The White Album’. The only people who are on every track are me and Dave. I would prefer to let people decide for themselves who is on which bit, but Neil ended up playing on five tracks. Steve plays on five racks, and Phil ended up playing on five or six songs. We are all however, on it at various places, PB: You have also gone into partnership with Last Night From Glasgow. JT: Yes, I have been eying them up from afar for quite a while, but it was our friend, the singer-songwriter Xan Tyler who gave me the final nudge. She was doing an album with them, and I think she mentioned us to them. I had a meeting with their boss Ian Smith, and his catchphrase is “Collaboration is better than competition.” It is a manufacturing/distribution deal. It works out perfectly for us. It doesn’t change anything in the way we run Stereogram. We supply the music and the artwork, and they deal with the manufacturer, Seabass, They get a good deal on that because they put a lot of volume through Seabass. They also deal with the distribution, which is great. Previously I would get our albums on Amazon and in the local indie record shops, but now you can find our records in Rough Trade and HMV and anywhere. It is a total game-changer for us. PB: Aare they going to be doing the distribution for all of Stereogram’s records? JT: Just the ones we ant to. They did James King and the Lonewolves’ second album ‘The Mortality Arcade’; last year, and they have just done Chris Reeve’s debut album ‘Gift of Songs’). PB: How has Phil Biggs’ role in the band developed? This is the second Cathode Ray album that he has worked upon. JT: Phil is getting more and more involved. There was a lot of crossover between him and Steve on the album. Phil has, however, a very different style to Steve. He does the twangy guitars on ‘Few and far Between’ and the big riffs on ‘Eventually’. He is more of a riffs man, while Steve is always the maverick who comes up with something that you wouldn’t expect, Phil is, however, very much a full-up, card-carrying member of The Cathode Ray now. PB: What inspired ‘Travelling in Style? ?It seems to be about an Utopia world. JT: That was one of the very first songs that I wrote when I began work on the album. In fact, it could have been the first one. That was written just after lockdown began in 2020, and I had this idea of escaping somewhere that was nicer. The odd thing about it was that it in some ways pre-empted things. We went to Sri Lanka for what was my first time last summer as a family, and it was almost as if I had had a vision of the future (Laughs). “The people were kinder, the children smile...” You see all these children smiling at you in the street. It was almost as if I knew that I knew that I was going to go somewhere more peaceful. PB: Do you see it as a religious or a spiritual album? You sing on ‘Halcyon Days’ “we all need a saviour.” JT: It just takes a general spiritual overview rather than it relating to one God. I come from a background of –shall we say?- spiritual people - in my family. My great-grandfather was a minister iin what is now the Charlotte Chapel in the West End of Edinburgh. His bust is inside as you go in, and so that is in my blood and in my background, but I just take a more general view of looking out for each other or being kind to one another(Laughs). PB: What inspired ‘Halcyon Days’? JT: Getting to the age that I am, situations change and you start losing people, They perhaps die or you lose touch or have disagreements with them. It is about you would like to get back to the halcyon days of your youth and maybe reconnect with them. PB: ‘Cross Purposes’ and ‘Eventualy’ have the 70’S Manchester/New York vibe of ‘The ‘Cathode Ray’ album. Yet you are rarely described as a post-punk band these days.. JT: it still crops up in passing, but less and less so. I think we now far more often get described as ‘experimental pop’ or ‘alternative’, but when people who have not heard us ask what we are I tend to say that we are on one side ‘art rock before punk’ like Bowie and Roxy Music, and on the other side ‘pop rock’ like The Beatles or The Beach Boys. PB ‘Consequences’ has been compared by one critic to ABBA… JT: I sent the album to a cousin of mine, and he thought ‘Consequences’ was like ABBA, and I didn’t get that at all at first (Laughs), but then eventually I realised that there were melodic similarities with ‘Take a Chance on Me’. Then with ‘No Uncertain Terms’ someone pointed out that there was an element of ‘Winner Takes It All’. PB: What do you see then as the main influences of this album? JT: Nothing. I listen to so much music that it is just what comes through. It is interesting to hear what people pick up from it. ‘Louder Than War’ referenced The High Llamas in their review, which I was pleased to read as I am a huge fan of The High Llamas, and someone else referenced the early 80’s Liiverpool/Teardrop Explodes post-punk/psychedelic scene. These are all bands that I like and listen to. In terms of the first album, it really was Television, Magazine and The Fall, but as it goes on it gets broader and broader. Maybe on ‘Halocyn Days’ I was looking at My Bloody Valentine and Shoegaze bands. ’Loveless’ is a big favourite of mine. A name which crops up with quite a lof people is the pop side of Brian Eno, and I can hear that in retrospect on his first four pop albums. It all goes into the mix. I don’t over-think it. There is nothing that is off-limits. I don’t ever think, “That doesn’t sound like The Cathode Ray. We can’t do that.” PB: Why do you think The Cathode Ray have achieved such longevity? JT: It is tricky for us to get together, so it stays fresh. Bands that are constantly work9ng together often burn out, but with us because we don’t do that many gigs and there are long gaps between rehearsals and recording material that has never been an issue. We are also friends and enjoy doing it and thar helps. At one hand it is a band, but it is also getting together with your friends PB: What are The Cathode Ray’s immediate plans for the future? JT: The ongoing situation with Neil Baldwin’s personal problems has lead us to introduce a new bassist to the line=up. He is called Sean Allison and has played previously with David Mack and Phil Biggs and is also Yorkshire based. I’ve been down there rehearsing with them and we shall be unveiling the new lineup when we headline Nice and Sleazy in Glasgow on August 15th with The Letting Go supporting. Steve Fraser is still involved and will play live with us as other commitments allow. An Autumn Edinburgh gig is also in the pipeline. In addition we’re lining up a date with The Monochrome Set next March when they take their 40th anniversary celebration of ‘The Lost Weekend’ to Glasgow. There will be a new single out in August featuring the new lineup. PB: Thank you,

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https://www.facebook.com/thecathoderay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catho

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