“We never knew when we started rehearsing the song that it would turn into a twenty month jam.”
Way back when, in the early days of Edge of Arcady, we received a message from Irish indie group Pineto Cats, pointing us in the direction of their seven minute epic video A Line To Separate. With an easy start and Matt Berninger style vocals, the song veers off with myriad tempo changes and hectic mood swings, the video every bit as ambitious as the song.
Christer Kavanagh, lead singer and guitarist, took some questions from us, letting us in on the making of the record, starting the band and how the video came to be.
Tell me a bit about A Line To Seperate.
A line to separate was a labour of love and also a shot in the dark! We never knew when we started rehearsing the song that it would turn into a twenty month jam. We gelled as players, buzzed off of each others ideas and generally had a real fun time writing music and collaborating. We knew that at six minute and forty-nine seconds, and with profanity in the chorus, radio and/or commercial use was more than likely off the table, but it was never about commercial success, it was about pushing our song writing to its limits and beyond.
We recorded the song in two studios: Hellfire Studios in Rathfarnam, Co. Dublin and Bay Studios, Wicklow town, Co. Wicklow.
The video looks like it was a big project to put together. How did it come about?
We shot the video in our rehearsal space, Dangerous studios in Wicklow town, with Kill Productions as our co-conspirator. We were working on a small budget so most of the production came from good old fashioned ideas and creativity. Oh yeah, and a twenty euro LED strip light with twelve different colour settings. We shot something like twelve hours of footage over three days and the seven minute video was whittled out of all of that.
How did Pineto Cats form?
I formed the band myself in the 27th month of the 21st century way back in march 2003!
Nearly nineteen years ago. I started learning to play guitar in 2002 and had written my first song ”Coming Up” by March of the following year. The first jam took place in my mother’s house in a room upstairs with myself and drummer Eric Horner. Not long after that, bassist Glen Dunne and second guitarist Paul ‘Sparky’ Doyle (all Wicklow town musicians) joined the band and the Pineto Cats were formed. The band has undergone many line-up changes and periods of abandonment since it’s inception, with current members, bassist Kev Pedreschi and second guitarist Jack Laverty joining in 2018 and drummer Derek Byrne joining in 2020.
Who or what are your influences?
We have a rather large spectrum between the four of us when it comes to influences. Anything from reggae to classical! Grunge, folk music, indie bands from the Noughties, the 70’s New York punk scene to Manchester in the 90’s & The Hacienda. Dylan, Lemmy, Leonard Cohen, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Love, Joy Division, Flaming Lips, Prince, Super Furry Animals, The Pixies, Bowie, Iggy, Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, Pink Floyd and Richard Hawley….. To name but a few.
What are Pineto Cats currently up to and what are your plans for the near future?
At the minute we are rehearsing our live set, we’re half way through the process. Working on songs mostly written during lockdown with some golden oldies thrown in for good measure. We hope to release a single before Christmas and start gigging early in the new year.