THE CAT'S MIAOW to Release Debut Studio Album WHEN YOU SMILED AND TURNED AWAY
Bart Cummings, Andrew Withycombe, Kerrie Bolton and Cam Smith recorded fourteen songs for the Melbourne quartet's new LP.
The Cat's Miaow will release its debut studio album, WHEN YOU SMILED AND TURNED AWAY, via Slumberland / Lost and Lonesome, with a street date of Oct 23, 2026. The album can be pre-ordered here, and the first single, 'Journey's End,' is available to stream via streaming services.
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. Now they're back with a long-awaited studio album, and first single 'Journey's End' shows us that all the hallmarks of the band's sound remain blissfully intact. The song's fragile warmth feels wise and comforting -- reflecting on life's continuum, the song's hook suggests in disarmingly low-key fashion, 'the journey's end is only the beginning...'
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 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.
The Cat's Miaow is:
Bart Cummings (guitar, bass, vocals)
Andrew Withycombe (bass, guitar)
Kerrie Bolton (vocals)
Cam Smith (drums)
Track List
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
