Forgotten Songs: Cullen Omori on Catatonic Youth - Piss Scene 7" Vinyl (Hozac Records) (2008)

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Forgotten Songs: Cullen Omori on Catatonic Youth - Piss Scene 7” Vinyl (Hozac Records) (2008)

Omori is Playing Under the Radar's SXSW Day Party Next Thursday

Mar 09, 2016 By Cullen Omori SXSW 2016 Party

Forgotten Songs is our recurring series where a musician or one of our writers examines a song they love that they feel has been overlooked. It could be a song by an artist who never made it big, or it could be a B-side/rarity or unheralded album track by a more well known artist. It could even be one of the artist’s own songs. For this edition of Forgotten Songs, former Smith Westerns frontman and singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Cullen Omori writes about an obscure song from 2008. Omori is releasing his debut solo album, New Misery, on March 18 via Sub Pop.

Omori is performing at Under the Radar‘s Thursday SXSW day party next Thursday at the Flamingo Cantina at 6th and Red River (515 E. 6th Street, Austin, TX 78701). The party is free and open to the public; head over to the Eventbrite page for our SXSW parties to RSVP. He goes on at 1:35 PM and the rest of the lineup features England’s Everything Everything, England’s MONEY, South Africa’s Petite Noir, Wales’ Gwenno, Pillar Point, and Northern Ireland’s Girls Names.

Read on as Omori writes about a lost lo-fi classic.

Catatonic Youth: Piss Scene 7” Vinyl (Hozac Records) (2008)

Back when I was in high school my brother and I spent most of our time trolling on the music forum Terminal Boredom. Terminal Boredom is a forum for record collectors and specialized in digging up bands old and new in the genres of punk, noise, and no wave. Although I was an obnoxious troll back then I did discover a lot of really cool music. Back in 2008, when lo-fi music was underground and cool, there were many different bands lauded on the site such as Blank Dogs and this band Catatonic Youth. Everyone back then seemed to be really into not revealing their identity and being very mysterious and, therefore, the identity of Catatonic Youth was a complete mystery. Todd Killings of Hozac Records, who had done an Smith Westerns single, put out this 7” “Piss Scene” and I remember hearing the 500 copies had already sold out before its release and I thought to myself that for my band to get to that point would be the coolest thing ever. I also went crazy for all the songs on the single. Each and every one of the songs were so stylized and catchy but also raw. After this single came out Catatonic Youth kind of disappeared, and then the whole lo-fi scene started to go above ground and that was that. So now we’re only left with this lo-fi DIY gem from 2008: the year lo-fi broke (lol).