Catlow covers a lot of ground on Pinkly Things

Pinkly Things (Aporia)

Remember 2005? We were all going to die from bird flu, Da Vinci’s City Hall had television audiences across the country glued to the screen, and the iPhone was but a glimmer in Steve Jobs’s eye. Way back then, Natasha Thirsk, who had previously played with a band called the Dirtmitts, released her first (and, to date, only) album as Catlow. It was called Kiss the World, and plenty of folks liked it, including our own Ken Eisner, who included it on his Top 10 list for that year.

What Thirsk has been up to since then is anyone’s guess, but she has resurrected the Catlow moniker for a new EP, the eight-song Pinkly Things. The singer-songwriter certainly hasn’t lost her knack for crafting hook-heavy tunes. This time around, these include the jangly indie rock of the opener, “House Arrest”, the melancholic electro pop of “Remorse Code” (listen up, Metric fans), the six-string-seared pep-punk of “Shinsy”, and the shimmery chill-out-tent trip-hop of “Wallflower”.

Thirsk covers so much ground in such a short time, in fact, that Pinkly Things seems a bit like a licensing demo. You’ll forgive her by the time the title track—an unabashedly epic dream-pop soundscape of delay-treated guitars and cooing vocals—closes the proceedings in stratosphere-scraping fashion.