Photos: THE CAT'S MIAOW to Release Debut LP WHEN YOU SMILED AND TURNED AWAY

The Cat's Miaow will release their debut studio album, When You Smiled And Turned Away, on Slumberland / Lost and Lonesome, with a street date of Oct 23, 2026.

The Cat's Miaow are Australian legends, whose string of gentle, melancholic indiepop singles and tapes are some of the 1990s best and sought-after. The highly anticipated album from the 90s Australian indie icons stays true to their practice of celebrating life's small moments. 'When You Smiled and Turned Away' hones in on the initial spark of a relationship, a subject that's returned to throughout the album. The band considers, as did Camus, are our lives the sum of our choices or are some moments always destined to happen?

The Cat's Miaow started in 1992 as a home-recording duo, Bart Cummings and Andrew Withycombe knocking out songs on Withycombe's four-track. Soon joined by Kerrie Bolton and Cam Smith, the quartet spent the next five years quietly, slowly working away in the suburbs of Melbourne. They've long been spoken-of in hushed tones in pop circles for their perfectly unadorned nuggets of gentle indiepop mastery, put to 4-track tape and drip-fed to the world a few decades back via 7' singles, cassettes and compilation appearances.

Following a pair of recent and *very* well-received compilations on the excellent World of Echo label, The Cat's Miaow were inspired to regroup to play some shows and begin working on new material. The result is When You Smiled And Turned Away, remarkably the band's debut studio album and happily some of their finest recordings yet. All the hallmarks of the band's classic sound remain intact: a fragile, warm melancholia built around Bart and Andrew's elegant, spare songwriting, the exuberant patter of Cam's brushed drums and the glow of Kerrie's celestial soprano vocal.

Themes of self discovery, regret, yearning and loss continue to loom large but are buoyed by sprightly tempos and subtle splashes of phased guitars and oscillating synthesizers. And at fourteen songs clocking in at just over half-an-hour, The Cat's Miaow are still masters of pop concision. It's a gift to have them back!

The Cat's Miaow is:

Bart Cummings (guitar, bass, vocals)
Andrew Withycombe (bass, guitar)
Kerrie Bolton (vocals)
Cam Smith (drums)

Tracklist

01 When You Smiled And Turned Away

02 I Hope My Dreams Will Reach You

03 If You're Lost, You Can Follow Me Home

04 Journey's End

05 Luminosity

06 The Love You Bring

07 CBGB's

08 Have You Done This Before?

09 I Do The Same Thing Too

10 A Life Formed Entirely, But Not Yet Whole

11 It's Never Easy To Say Goodbye

12 Going To A Show

13 I Couldn't Sleep Last Night

14 Try And Pretend

Need more Music Theatre News in your life?
Sign up for all the news on the Summer season, discounts & more...