Catl. at NXNE Hub, NXNE 2015

The seemingly non-busy NXNE Hub presented by Samsung had the night capped off by local act Catl. a band that mixes early style rock and roll with booty shaking beats. The nice thing about NXNE sets is they are all only about 40 minutes each, which is great if you don’t like the band as the set won’t last forever, but is quite terrible when you love the band and you just want to party all night. As Jamie Fleming and Sarah Kirkpatrick were setting up their gear, some friends of theirs brought up some shots of Jamieson that they all did to get in the mood. 

Their brand of Robert Johnson blues and Chuck Berry rock is quite literally impossible not to like. I have yet to show their music to someone (or have them see clips of them live) and not made them a fan of this band. After grinding away for years they finally seem to be getting their big breaks. Playing an important gig for NXNE was a good start but they will be playing Hamilton Street Crawl and an even bigger festival in TURF. 

After playing a song Kirkpatrick realized she wasn’t getting the proper sound levels in so she asked the drums to be turned up so she “can sound like a badass”. The introduced a song as a soul song and encouraged people to grab a partner to dance to. A young man pulled his lady to the front of the crowd and did a bit of swing dancing, much to the ladies embarrassment, as he was way more into it than she was. Watching Fleming’s knees buckle every time he plays a sustained note makes you wish music flowing through your veins as strongly as it does with him. The band’s music oozes sex appeal and when you have a couple on stage who are just as passionate with each other it is hard to not get into the mood. You look at them swinging their hips and its not hard to imagine why Elvis was considered too sexual of a performer to play on TV back in the 1950’s as Fleming looks like he took dance lessons from the King. 

While the band is still making a name for themselves, don’t be surprised if over the next year you start hearing about them a lot more.