Music / Ratcat

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Ratcat is an Australian Alternative Rock band formed in Sydney in 1985. The band typically combines ripping punk instrumentals (Buzzcocks are a pretty audible influence at times) with frontman Simon Day's fondness for classic pop melodies and occasional moments of Jangle Pop - think an Australian version of The Jesus and Mary Chain, minus any real controversy surrounding them.

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credits Ratcat as the "first alternative band to go mainstream" in the country. In May 1991, their Tingles EP climbed to the top of the Australian singles chart off the popularity of lead track "That Ain't Bad". A month later, Ratcat held the #1 position on the single and album charts simultaneously, with their second album Blind Love and its lead single "Don't Go Now" - Tingles finished that year as the second-highest selling single/EP in Australia, a huge achievement for an independent band.

This is as good as things would get for the band though; after spending the second half of 1991 touring the UK and Europe to little fanfare, much of Australia had already moved on from Ratcat by the time they returned home. Their follow-up to Blind Love, released only a year later, produced some minor hit singles but didn't even reach the Australian album chart at all. After one more low-key album release in 1997, Ratcat have largely focused on live performances throughout the 21st century.

Discography:

• Ratcat EP (1987)
• This Nightmare (1989)
• Tingles EP (1990)
• Blind Love (1991)
• Insideout (1992)
• Rain EP (1994)
• The Smiler EP (1995)
• Laughing Bag and Other Funny Stories EP (1997)
• Easy Rider (1997)
• All Stripped Back (2023)

Ratcat provides examples of:

• Album Closure / Self-Referential Track Placement: The last track on Blind Love is titled "The End".
• Ambiguous Ending: The final verse of "Don't Go In the Water" has the singer's girlfriend beginning to drown, and he's preparing to save her despite being a terrible swimmer himself. No word on whether she's successfully rescued or not.
• And Show It to You: The album cover of This Nightmare has a man holding his own heart, complete with a hole in his chest where ribs and other organs are visible. Blind Love's cover also has a doctor holding a heart - his chest cavity isn't visible, but it's somewhat implied that the heart is his. In both cases, the heart doesn't reflect actual human anatomy and is shaped like a cartoon "love heart" instead.
• Audience Participation Song: Live performances of "Getting Away (From This World)" typically start with Simon Day getting the audience to do a countdown from 10 to 1.
• Call-Back: "Getting Away (From This World)" from the Tingles EP namedrops their debut album in the the third verse.
• Department of Redundancy Department: The full lyric referenced in the previous example is "This nightmare screams in my sleep at night". Unless you're using "nightmare" as a figure of speech, or happen to be sleeping during the day, then the second half of that line probably goes without saying.
• Forever Fling: Played for Laughs in "True Lust", where the singer can't get over a girl that he was briefly involved with... in kindergarten.
• I Am the Band: Simon Day is Ratcat's only constant member, writing and singing on most of the band's songs. In addition, being a graphic artist, he designed much of the artwork for their albums and singles himself.
• The Masochism Tango: "Run and Hide" and "The Wonder of You" both depict Simon Day and his partner alternating between fighting each other and making love. "Baby's Got a Gun" is an even more extreme case, with Day gleefully singing about his love for a woman who's threatened to cut him up and shoot him dead.
• Meaningful Name: The final single that Ratcat released on their original label Waterfront Records was called "Saying Goodbye".
• Miniscule Rocking: "The Eyeball Mutiny", clocking in at 1:23.
• Naughty Nurse Outfit: The nurse on the cover of Blind Love.
• Never My Fault: The protagonist of "Car Crash", who admits to causing the fatal accident but downplays it massively.

• Non-Appearing Title: The album Blind Love doesn't have the titular phrase appear in its lyrics at any point. It may simply be another Call-Back, this time to "Skin" from Tingles, with its chorus of "she loves me blind".
• No Sympathy: "Car Crash" has the band apologising for killing "all your family and loved ones" in the titular accident, before celebrating the fact that they survived the crash and your loved ones didn't, then pointing out that they aren't insured and won't be attempting to make up for the damage caused anyways.
• Precision F-Strike: "Run and Hide" has the line "sometimes we fuck all night", with the rest of Ratcat's discography largely avoiding profanity as a whole.
• Rearrange the Song: All Stripped Back is an album of older Ratcat songs re-recorded with acoustic instrumentation.
• Refuge in Audacity: Ratcat could get pretty outrageous in their earlier songs - the aforementioned "Car Crash" is the best example, but their debut album also had the song "Dead Dog Standing", with the opening line "A dead dog lies with the cats out on the mat/Watch me pull a rabbit from his hat". "The Eyeball Mutiny", from the same album, describes a woman dropping dead as her eyeballs pop out of her head, grow arms and legs, and proclaim that they're going to travel the world.
• Revolving Door Band: Ratcat has had six different bass players throughout its existence (seven if you count Simon Day playing bass in-studio at some points). Also three different drummers, though one only replaced founding drummer Andrew Polin for the self-titled EP, and Polin stuck around for quite a while. Still, the band's most-recognised lineup of Day, Polin and bassist Amr Zaid only lasted 3 years.
• Sampling: "Getting Away (From This World)" samples the mission control and flight comms from the ill-fated 1986 launch of the space shuttle Challenger.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: On "Skin": "The guns are going a-blam blam blam!"
• Silly Love Songs: Their biggest hits "Don't Go Now" and "That Ain't Bad", along with numerous other songs including "Feels So Good" and "Baby Baby". "That Ain't Bad" is a deconstruction of sorts, written by Simon Day as "a simple attempt to mix noisy guitars and the words ‘I love you’ together in a song without one contradicting the other”, according to music journalist Craig Matheson.
• Singing Voice Dissonance: Simon Day speaks with a general Aussie accent, which all but disappears when he sings, in favour of a very American-sounding twang.
• Special Guest: Steve Garvey, best known for his work with Buzzcocks, played bass on "Holiday".
• Step Up to the Microphone: On Blind Love, Amr Zaid wrote and sang "Pieces", making it one of the rare original Ratcat songs to be neither written nor sung by Simon Day.
• Title-Only Chorus: "Don't Go Now" and "Go Go", the latter adding the words "here" and "there".
• Trauma Conga Line: In "Everything is Happening Again", Simon wakes up from a violent nightmare, is fired from his job after turning up late, has his girlfriend tell him she needs more time to herself, then returns home to find that his cat died.
• White Void Room: The "Don't Go Now" music video takes place in one.
• A Wild Rapper Appears!: The single version of "The World (In a Wrapper)" adds a guest verse from Rosano "El Assassin" Martinez of Sydney hip-hop group Sound Unlimited. This version is sometimes labelled "The World (In a Rapper)".
• Word Salad Lyrics: While Simon Day's lyrics tend to be quite direct, "Getting Away (From This World)" engages in this big-time: