Owl & the Pussycat
Owl & the Pussycat (Kill Rock Stars)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Space City Rock, Winter 2005

Owl & the Pussycat are the type of act that I’m usually happy enough to sit through in a live situation and won’t ever put an ounce of effort into. Their self-titled CD showcases a perfectly serviceable form of spare pop based on not much more than the acoustic guitars and voices of Lois Maffeo and Greg Moore (despite the occasional bass, piano or fuzztone guitar riff thrown in for effect), but there comes a point, somewhere around the instrumental “Raccoon,” when I become stultifyingly bored. I don’t know much about Moore, but I know that Lois has done this sort of thing before, and better. It’s like a breath of fresh air when the Galiano Island Hutterite Men’s Choir shows up with a finger-snappin’ “Take it or leave it” refrain at the end of “Company,” simply because it’s so odd in the context of the rest of the record, even if it doesn’t work. Owl & the Pussycat is an object lesson in the perils of hewing too firmly to the conviction that less is more.

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