Peter Cat Recording Co.’s ‘BETA’: Something so real

Less than an hour into BETA, Peter Cat Recording Co.’s (PCRC’s) latest album that arrives five years after Bismillah, one thing becomes evident: the band doesn’t want to be measured by what they had become. Back in 2019, Bismillah, with its glittering amalgamation of gypsy jazz and disco-rock underscoring lively trumpets, ornate instrumentation, and frontman Suryakant Sawhney’s velvety croons, posited the quintet’s distinctive sound as an idiom. Released to unanimous acclaim, the album spawned a cult-like following among Indian listeners, which during the pandemic years of transnational music discoveries widened to include fans from America and Europe. It would have been understandable if PCRC had chosen to stick by that punchy sonic landscape for their next record—whether to reinforce their cachet as “one of India’s best kept music secrets” or to deliver a guaranteed banger.

But instead of turning in a creatively calculated third album, PCRC settles on harnessing their control as a musical unit; shedding skin only to be stitched up anew. By which I mean, the band opts for some wildly adventurous, unhinged, and at times, jarring sonic departures across 13 tracks on BETA, intent on making their genre-defying soundscapes more inscrutable. Their new record, as a result, sounds earthier, folkier, moodier, and noisier than anything they have attempted before, equally jangly and gentle in its far-reaching intimacy.

The evolution of the band’s sonic tapestry—imprinted by their relocation to Goa during the pandemic—announces itself on sunny lead single People Never Change. A one-minute long Punjabi folk-inflected prelude kickstarts the proceedings; dholak and iktara samples give way to jazzy saxophone and bouncing synths until Sawhney swoops in to protest the culture of stagnation. Sawhney’s vocals start off resembling a bratty reprimand but slowly turn into existential pleading as the instrumentation strips itself down with each chorus, the track confidently flitting in and out of heady psychedelia, disco, electronica, and jazz-pop.

This contrasting language of expressionism, where the weight of ennui is masked under exuberant arrangements, is even more of an invitation on the breathtaking Flowers R Blooming. Sounds of a nuclear explosion appear on cue, before the song basks in the afterglow of hushed clarinet, ghungroo, chimes, and swarsangam. Sawhney uses his voice as an instrument, modulating its ebb and flow ever so slightly to invoke the escalating dread of mortality occupying body and soul.

If the disparate sonic ideas and stylistic shifts harmonise cohesively on BETA—christened to mark drummer Karan Singh’s recent fatherhood—it is in part due to the record directly imbibing the personality of its members. When they made Bismillah, Dhruv Bhola (bass, samples) and Rohit Gupta (keys, horns, woodwind) had newly joined the band, then comprising Kartik Sundareshan Pillai (guitars, horns, woodwind), Sawhney, and Singh. At the time, their contributions were limited in comparison. It’s only half a decade later that the wide-ranging choices on BETA feel wholly representative of the prowess of each member, right down to leaning into their musical preoccupations beyond the ambit of PCRC.

This kind of interconnectedness suggests their attention to interrogate, rewrite, and expand their own language. For the first time in the band’s decade-long existence, Sawhney steps back from his vocalist duties on three songs. Pillai helms Foolmuse, bringing a playful edginess to its one-sided longing, topped with a neat bridge and insane drum lines that instantly recall Begum—the dream-pop outfit that he fronts alongside Bhola and Singh. The acoustic strumming-laden I Deny Me, written and sung by Bhola, is a heart-stopping standout; its earnest serenading in line with the indie fare that the musician serves under his moniker Bowls.

Similarly, 21C, with its synth riffs, cymbal thrashing, and tortured lament (“Now that they dance in France/And party over you in LA/Is that enough for you/Enough for you”) is a sad dad dance bop that is undeniably Lifafa-coded, nodding at Sawhney’s Hindi electronic project. Even the lush ambient field recordings dispersed across BETA, the flute interludes in Control Room, and their signature brass being utilised for more than a melodic hook, borrows from the Fursat FM ethos, Gupta’s experimental solo act.

Involving new voices and visions prove to be a studied gamble. In a sense, it lets Sawhney reflect the extent of his world-weary maturity into PCRC’s songwriting. It’s evident in Suddenly, a devastating ode to parenting culled from the ruins of memory, and in Connexion, a dizzying rock out of an older track that acquires an urgent edge. By the time A Beautiful Life, the album’s shimmering closer, comes on, I was struck by how this softer approach somehow renders the crises Sawhney sings about, the unnameable thing he craves, remarkably tangible. On BETA, time doesn’t just float by. It slows down so uncomfortably that there is no option but to accept that the beauty of living and its harsh reality are not bitter enemies—it’s all we have.

Poulomi Das is a freelance film and culture writer based in Goa.