The Catherine Wheel

It would be fine with the British rock band the Catherine Wheel if everything came up roses. But please, no daisies.

The band makes that particular request at the onset of "Wishville," its fifth album and its first with Columbia Records. On "Sparks Are Gonna Fly," the opening song, singer-guitarist Rob Dickinson pleads several times: "C`mon Daisy, don`t drown me this time."

However, the dreaded waters are neither ocean nor lake.

"Daisy is depression. It`s a good ol` metaphor," Dickinson said from New York recently after arriving stateside for the band`s summer tour.

Another line from that song - "I`ve got a good idea what breaks you makes you shine" - also is the album`s defining statement, he said.

"That line sums up the whole premise of the title `Wishville,` which is the desire to get to something better. You can use those dark forces very much to your advantage and turn the whole thing around, if you really want to."

The Catherine Wheel had some wishes of its own when it began writing the album, as well as some guiding words from producer Tim Friese-Green, who told Dickinson that the Catherine Wheel needn`t fear indebtedness to the devil if it wrote a pop hit.

Additionally, the four-piece band - whose 1992 debut, "Ferment," included the classic "I Want to Touch You" - sought a lighter touch for "Wishville" and streamlined the album from the start.

Although he and his band mates wrote some 60 songs for possible use, Dickinson said, "We wanted to have nine songs on the record. We had a plan for it to be concise. We wanted it to be about 40 minutes long. We wanted people to get through it and start again."

And to distance "Wishville" from what Dickinson described as the soft-focus romance that crept into some earlier albums - particularly "Chrome" and "Happy Days" - this one is "quite detached, almost like the songs are written by someone who`s viewing it from the outside looking in. This record is a departure in that it`s done with a lack of sentimentality."

He called the new song "All of That" the finest he`s written. With endearing honesty - "I`m enormous, I am slight; I am religious, I am fat; I am delicious, I am crap. I am all of that" - it gives a nod to the bipolar nature of the Catherine Wheel, whose songs have long alternated between caterwauling electric guitars and cool, shimmering passages.

"It`s a song that`s quite cathartic. It`s meant to reflect someone`s, or my, contrariness and the complexities of trying to figure out what kind of person we are."

He said the more frequent quiet moments on "Wishville" reflect the band`s growing confidence.

"Even in the beginning, we were starting to understand the power of volume and how to use it wisely."

What he`s come to realize, Dickinson said, is that "the band can be just as powerful when it`s whispering as when it`s firing at full cylinders.

"It`s more emotionally moving when it`s quieter. That`s not to say we`ve forgotten about the electric guitar."

Something else made "Wishville" unusual, said Dickinson, a first cousin of Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson. "A lot of the songs were generated rhythmically. It`s the most rhythmically interesting record we`ve done."

However, for all its new approaches, "Wishville" finds some ties to the Catherine Wheel`s past intact. There`s another food song, "Creme Caramel," and for good reason, Dickinson said.

"I equate food with sensual pleasure. Someone who doesn`t appreciate food is never going to be good at sex."

And while "Wishville" may be decidedly nonsentimental, it does have one song of affection - although the recipient is hardly warm and fuzzy.

"The song `Gasoline` is very much a long song for a city," Dickinson said. "I love cars. I love cities. It`s a song with quite an industrial, gritty kind of quality. It`s like an obsessional paean to what made our countries great, which is machines."

(c) Copley News Service

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Author: James Healy