Songs '94-'98 is a smart selection of material from The Cat's Miaow, an Australian indie-pop group that gifted their decade with some of it's finest songs. Released on World Of Echo, the album draws from the group's string of excellent seven-inch singles, a small clutch of compilation contributions, and features one previously unreleased song, "I Take It That We're Through", recorded in 1998.
The Cat's Miaow were always worldly and stylish, anyway, each seven-inch single a refined artifact, each song a peaceable jewel. You could hear some relationships with other music - someone (if not everyone) in The Cat's Miaow was a Galaxie 500 fan; there's a minimalism to the playing and melodies that recalls Young Marble Giants, Marine Girls, Beat Happening - but the spirit in these songs is endearingly individualised, the result of a hermetic vision, an ideal of what a simple, unadorned pop song could be. They had a winning way with simplicity, songs like "Autumn", "Crying" and "I Can't Sleep Thinking You Hate Me" passing by in the blink of a moistened eye, and when they stretched out, as on "Firefly", you can hear hints of the drifting ambience they'd perfect in their other band, Hydroplane.
