Radio Wars

Of all the celebrated home recording artists that haunt the pages of Bandcamp and the basements of the DIY touring circuit, few have had an output as eclectic, enigmatic, and consistent as The Cradle's Paco Cathcart. In a departure from The Cradle's more lo-fi works, Radio Wars bounces from track to track with a polished exuberance as Cathcart delivers some of their catchiest music to date. Pumping with auto- tuned nursery rhyme hooks and densely-programmed drum machine beats, the album boasts a sonic palette that owes as much to the production of DJ Rashad and the erratic vocal approach of Playboi Carti as it does to Cathcart's more familiar Dub and Gamelan influences. It's a musical world that draws you in quickly and leaves you deeply immersed throughout its 22 - track running time.

As with previous releases, Cathcart's lyrics celebrate and reflect on the profundity of day-to-day city life experiences. The words are delivered through deceptively simple refrains that often mask challenging subject matter. Radio Wars was written and recorded in NYC in the lead up to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time which included the run up to the electoral defeat of a fascist president, historic protests against police abuse across the country, as well as the early months of the pandemic, when NYC was at the centre of the outbreak. Social and political dissonance, alluded to in the album's title, was at a high, and that air of contradiction can be heard throughout, bleeding into moments that feel intimate and reflective. Coupled with bold production choices and feverish energy throughout, Radio Wars, is a Cradle album of and for the times.