Earthling by MISSINCAT

On her fifth album, “Earthling”, once again the Berlin indie great MISSINCAT draws on her very own, unmistakable style: reduced, profound indie pop with catchy melodies and wonderfully airy instrumentation.

Milan-born multi-instrumentalist Caterina Barbieri aka MISSINCAT has been working as a musician and producer in Berlin for more than 13 years. Her exceptional songwriting and versatile voice have repeatedly earned her a wide media presence and a loyal audience. MISSINCAT has toured with Amy Winehouse and worked with Hundreds, Me And My Drummer, LaBoumFatale and Federico Albanese, among others.

Since her last Italian-language album “10”, Barbieri has been at home with her music on the Berlin label Listenrecords. The catharsis that the return to her mother tongue on the album represented for her has helped the versatile artist to achieve more personal and artistic freedom and curiosity in the long term. However, MISSINCAT's new album in English once again conveys a special intimacy, the feeling of being addressed directly - which has always been an outstanding feature of her music.

Earthlings are humans, seen from an extraterrestrial perspective. They share not only the Earth they live on, but also desires and hopes, struggles and weaknesses, and the beauty and ugliness of being human. It is these ordinary universal stories of love and longing, frustration, dreams and human imperfection that MISSINCAT sings about on her album “Earthling”. However, Barbieri elevates them to celestial matter by embedding them in precious, intimate and yet cinematic musical landscapes.

Electronic beats accompanied by acoustic drums (Matze Pröllochs on drums), warm strings (longtime collaborator Marius Kiefer on cello), dreamy guitars and synthesizers make up the arrangements of MISSINCAT's compositions. The approach is minimalist and spacious, leaving room for her airy vocals and narratives.

“This album had a very long gestation period. Some of the songs were waiting on a hard disk for many years. In the meantime, I released two albums, went on tour and did lots of other things. One day I finally got them out again and continued producing them,” says Barbieri about the album's creation process.
“Although I produced and mixed this record almost entirely by myself, it feels like a collaborative effort to me: For the first time, for example, I wrote some of the lyrics with someone else, with singer and songwriter Alexia Peniguel, aka Alex St. Joan. I co-produced “Hit My Heart” with Anton Líni, who also co-produced “Mad About Me” and “Masquerade”. During the production of my songs I was very receptive to feedback, perhaps more so than ever before. This openness may stem from the fact that the songs come from different phases of my life. So I wasn't too possessive and really interested in understanding how others perceived them during the early stages of production”

“Earthling” thus also reminds us all the more through its creation of what connects us as human beings, in a time when there is often more emphasis on what supposedly divides us. So perhaps MISSINCAT has the most important message for us that a musician can send right now.

missincat.com