South London’s Deptford Sound Collective dropped their second single, “We All Need to Get a Cat”, on March 21st, following their debut “Give Me. Give Me. Give Me, I Want It All” – an 80s disco parody with a satirical political bite that came out on Valentine’s Day. This one goes somewhere different. Two members of the collective lost their dog, and when grief settled into their South London flat, a six-month-old rescue kitten named Aki showed up and systematically refused to let them stay sad. The song is their thank-you letter to him.
It’s a parody song with a big heart and a genuinely catchy hook, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. The jangly guitars, handclaps, and sunny synths are all doing exactly what they’re supposed to do – the arrangement nods to classic indie-pop and keeps things bright and uncluttered. “We All Need to Get a Cat” will probably get stuck in your head for a couple of days, and it’s absolutely worth sharing with your cat-loving friends. A fresh musical take it is not, but that’s fine – the song earns its charm through warmth and sincerity rather than anything adventurous. The detail that Aki spends his days “slinking around spying on neighbours” before “burrowing under the duvet, working on his next seduction” is the kind of specific, lived-in writing that makes the difference between a novelty track and one that actually lands.
With their first two singles, the Deptford Sound Collective have already shown they can work in more than one mode – sharp political satire one month, something genuinely tender the next. That’s a decent range for a band with only two singles out.