Peter Cat Recording Co. Drops New Single 'People Never Change' Ahead Of Album 'BETA' & Extensive Tour

New Delhi-rooted indie frontrunners of India Peter Cat Recording Co. have just dropped 'People Never Change', the first single from their upcoming album 'BETA' which arrives as the first newly written music from the band since their seminal 2019 album 'Bismillah'.

Founded in 2009, Peter Cat Recording Co. wiped clean most of their work (though most of it can now be found through unofficial uploads) released till 2016, which included albums 'Climax', 'Sinema', the debut 'Wall of Want' and the one-track-a-week collection 'Transmissions', replacing it with a compilation of selected works from that material as 'Portrait Of A Time' in 2018. Their follow-up 'Bismillah' in 2019 cemented the band's status as a leading figure in India's independent music and one of its most meteorically rising exports among international listenership. When the band quietly offered its fans a collection of old demos and rejected tunes in 2020 entitled 'Happy Holidays', the band wrote: "While Bismillah was the end of an era of learning for this humble little group, the next proper release will be something more monumental and important, and a welcome to the new world."

The upcoming album, the third one in the band's current official discography, therefore aims to deliver on that promise of "something more monumental and important". Its first single 'People Never Change' ambitiously distils styles from across the band's past work but with an unprecedented cohesion.

The full version of the track fills almost all of its first 2 minutes with the kind of experimentalism that is a salient part of the band's early efforts or most of the solo work by its members like Suryakant Sawhney (as Lifafa) and Kartik Pillai (as Jamblu).

Dissonant sounds and a jubilant horn melody overlays on top of Bhangra-inspired motifs. The section drops into the guitar-backed songwriting most associated with the band as frontman Suryakant Sawhney chooses snarl for the world and escapism for self with a cheerfully delivered self-accepted break from expectations on self with lines like "I don't wanna be a crowd // I just wanna be a cloud // And I wanna see it work out // I can look away, spineless // Pretend it's a movie". The latter half of the song brings in the disco-inspired grooves and string lines previously found on works like 'Memory Box' before elements from all previous parts of the track come together for the final section of the song.

The full album 'BETA' will drop on August 9 via L.A. label Muddy Water, right around the time Peter Cat Recording Co. goes on their most extensive tour to date with a 77-city run that passes through North America, UK, Europe and India and includes shows as the support act for the globally prominent trio Khruangbin.

Find the dates for the India shows below and head here for tickets, which have just gone live.

Peter Cat Recording Co. India Tour Dates

December 14th – Drome Arena, Pune
December 15th – W Goa, Goa
December 29th – JVPD Ground, Mumbai
December 22nd – DLF Cyberhub, Gurugram
December 28th – Jayamahal Palace, Bengaluru
December 29th – Roots, Kolkata

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Image by Salihah Saadiq