Judie Tzuke — The Cat Is Out
The Cat Is Out is a synth-heavy mid-1980’s pop-rock album, that features some soaring-to-powerfully wailing lead female vocals, and a good enough selection of memorable tunes/ different moods. With the album often bringing to mind more modern-but- retro focused acts like La Roux, but with a slightly more AOR edge to proceedings. Here from Talking Elephant Records is a CD reissue of the album, bringing together the original ten-track album with a selection of three single edits- bringing the original forty four-minute albums up to nearing an hour.
The CD comes presented in a cream, red, and black coloured four-panel digipak- which features on its front cover the blond 'n' big-haired Tzuke standing in a white-painted loft building with a cat in the rafters. Text wise there’s only song titles/ credits, which is a pity- as it would have maybe nice to have some background into the album's release/ what Ms Tzuke thinks about the album now.
Judie Tzuke is an English singer-songwriter, and in 1977 she signed to Elton John’s label The Rocket Record Company. She is most known for her 1977 hit “Stay with Me till Dawn” which charted in both the UK and Australian charts at the time. Since 1979 she has released twenty-three studio albums, with her last been 2018’s Woman To Woman that saw her collaborating with fellow British singer/ songwriters Beverley Craven and Julia Fordham. Over the years her sound has moved from Pop rock, hard rock, soft rock,folk-pop, and adult contemporary. With the album to hand been very keyboard-heavy AOR, with darts into 80’s synth-pop.
The album kicks off with the constantly pulsing electro drumbeats and steady bound keyboards of “How Sweet It Is” which features a belting chorus with Tzuke sweetly hazed vocals simmering over a blend of harmonically climbing keys & subdued pop-rock guitar. As we move through the album we come to electro-soul pop meet wailing AOR guitar soloing of “Girl Without A Name”. There’s lulling key stabs -meet - snapping beats of “Harbour Lights” which features some nice synth chimes, snazzy guitar lines, and the odd touch of twanging bass. We have “You” which is a Marvin Gay cover and the album’s single- and here we find deep buzzing and plodding synths, powerfully wailing vocals(that have a very La Roux feel to them), and hissing ‘n’ clicking beats.
Before hearing this reissue, I wasn’t aware of Ms Tzuke work, and I must say if you are in the mood for a very 80’s sounding blend of AOR and Synthpop you’ll certainly get a kick out of The Cat Is Out. It certainly be nice to hear some more of her work in the future, so it be neat if Talking Elephant maybe reissued another one of her 80’s records, as she put out an impressive seven albums in the decade.