With another five months to go until their headlining UK tour, tickets to see the versatile The Cat Empire are already selling out!
Following the enormous success of their seventh chart-topping album Stolen Diamonds, the Aussies return with an impressive array of dates confirmed for March next year, including Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham.
For over a decade, The Cat Empire have been known far and wide as one of the world’s greatest party bands. Their colourful, genre-bending music, shipped across the world in travellers’ backpacks, seems at home almost anywhere, and yet the band has always been a kind of illusive stranger.
The group formed in 1999, thriving in Melbourne’s thriving jazz scene while combining the brassy sound with ska, funk, reggae and Latin. After recruiting a range of brass members to expand their avant-garde sound, as well as performing across the country and at international festivals, they released their debut album in 2003. The self-titled release earnt them record deals with Virgin and EMI, and is now 2x Platinum certified. Their next Platinum album Two Shoes came in 2005 and debuted at number one in the Australian charts, while their limited edition 2006 follow-up, Cities, won Best World Music Album at the ARIA Music Awards that year.
The following April, they released their strong fourth album So Many Nights, which Paste said “demonstrates that The Cat Empire is more than just a party band”. Conveying how in-demand their music is, in 2010, their next release Cinemas was mysteriously leaked and sold on eBay to an avid fan for $200 just weeks before release, then debuted at number three on the ARIA Albums Chart. Next came Steal The Light in 2013, before their penultimate release Rising With The Sun in 2016, which debuted at number one in Australia, and stayed in the top 20 for an impressive 21 weeks.
Stolen Diamonds was released in February this year, after they drip-fed fans with new singles on the first day of each month from July 2018 onwards. The 13-track album debuted in the top 20 in sixteen countries around the world, and was widely well-received. Beat called it their “most innovative album yet”, while Double J added “the band’s best asset is their ability to remain fresh without abandoning the sound that endeared them to the world in the first place”.
Difficult to describe and impossible to categorise, The Cat Empire’s reputation is built upon a chaotic and fiercely uplifting live performance, that saw them complete an impressive 120 live shows across the world, over the last year, playing to a combined audience of over 600,000 fans.
Having played multiple night, sold out shows across the UK at venues such as London’s Roundhouse and the prestigious Royal Albert Hall, The Cat Empire are keen to take their fans on a journey back to where it all began. With one date sold out already, hurry up and grab tickets to their March 2020 tour now!