Black Cat on a fire throne says to show the failing in your bones
Here we turn inside out or turn to stone
These pearls are just old sand falling through my hand
Black Cat says, “Careless be damned”
On their fourth album, Black Cat, 8mm (Juliette Beavan, Sean Beavan, and Johnny Radtke) carve out a world so peculiar, so potent, it feels like falling into a fevered reverie. Here, songs don’t simply play—they loom, linger, and lay bare hidden corridors of the mind. It’s a latticework of restless musings, these tracks threading through realms both machine-made and achingly human, each one a strange vessel of self-declaration, drifting under the cold glow of CCTV blue and the quiet ache of loss. Black Cat is less an album, more a mirror reflecting life’s strange glow—a world sculpted with the eerie elegance of Portishead and PJ Harvey, the depth of Massive Attack, the quiet intensity of Billie Eilish.
“I become someone else to express complicated feelings,” explains Juliette Beavan, “so in that way, it is very personal without being autobiographical. It’s a bit of a mask, not for the purpose of hiding but to present a moment for public view.”
If there’s any gospel in Black Cat, it’s a whispered mantra: be here now. It echoes the wisdom of Ram Dass—simple, but fiercely present. In a world where attention is splintered and patience a rarity, 8mm beckons you to pause, to let the pulse and pull of music dig in, to ground you. They invite you to turn from the shallow, to feed on something with heart and heft. When the world’s noise feels thin and the spirit feels starved, Black Cat serves as sustenance, a delicate defiance, reminding you to find depth in each moment—to listen, linger, and let go.
The album opens with the smoldering title track, Black Cat, a spectral voyage led by a feline guide through a landscape flipped on its head, where cold air hangs heavy, and the speaker stumbles through her own reckoning. The Black Cat—insistent, unwavering—urges her to “open her eyes,” calling her to break from the numbness, to rise from the ruins with fresh resolve. In this journey, she sheds the past like old skin, embracing the flame and forging herself anew, reborn in the fire’s crucible, transforming grit into gold. It strikes like a thunderous self-declaration, echoing the intensity of Sinead O’Connor at her most resolute.
For those attuned to the atmospheric echoes of The Blue Nile or Kubrick’s The Shining, Over and Over resonates like a haunting in an old, empty ballroom, where each note bounces off walls thick with time. Here, 8mm crafts a vision of obsession, a loop of longing that never quits. Juliette’s vocals drift like messages left unanswered, spiraling through the ether. This track sinks into the ache of love lost and time unhealed, each line replaying in a relentless cycle, a reminder of all the things we chase but never capture, each refrain the fool’s last hope.
Blown Away lures you in with an ominous synth, minimalist and simmering with tension and sensuality. But just as you brace for darkness, it slips into warmth—an oasis where weary souls rest, lovers trading quiet promises to leave it all behind. There’s a softness here, a pause from the album’s raw pulse, as though retreating into a hushed reverie, a place far from the clangor of the world.
Following Blown Away, the album takes a sharp left turn—plunging into a sultry cover of INXS’s Need You Tonight, a rendition that feels as though it’s slipped into the neon-lit green room of a hidden club, sensual and weighty with the thrill of secrecy.
Then comes Shoot The Messenger, an anthem of defiance with the slow-burn edge of a lost Portishead track. Here, fierce resolve glows like embers as the voice rises, undeterred, rejecting the call to silence. This is a cry for those who’ve come through the storm with fire in their eyes, refusing to bow or bend. With a “mouth full of fire,” the singer stands her ground, each note a testament to resilience, a promise to meet whatever lies ahead with unbreakable strength, intent on showing the world she cannot be subdued.
The album turns, daringly, to White Rabbit, a cover with reverence for Jefferson Airplane’s original but laced with a darker edge, as if the rabbit hole leads somewhere deeper. Then comes Run, a pledge made in hushed tones and cracked voices, capturing loyalty that stands through life’s turmoil. Here, two souls, stumbling through life’s chaos, grip each other’s hands and promise to “run until their hearts break,” ready to bear any storm. Each line rings with the weight of shared hardship, a vow turned unbreakable by time and trials, each promise a steady anchor in rough seas.
I Forgot to Say slips into regret, laced with the sharpness of mortality. It’s a song for those haunted by words unsaid, by the knowledge that time, careless and cruel, steals chances once taken for granted. Here, the weight of lost moments is almost unbearable—a ceaseless, aching fall, a meditation on love, loss, and the cruel myth of endless tomorrows.
The album’s close, Goodbye Lullaby, aches with loss, the hollow aftermath of once-cherished love now beyond reach. Malibu’s view looms like a bruise—a lingering ache as they sit with memories, reluctantly accepting the final notes of a love song that lingers, tender and raw.
“Black Cat is a reaction to the manufacturing of the scatterbrained,” says Juliette Beavan. “It’s like we’re all constantly changing the channel on a remote and never stopping to watch anything. So while sonically, [our music] is what happens when Sean, Johnny and I get in the room with gear, story-wise for me, the lyrics are a reaction: I want you to get lost for a moment and stay put for three to five minutes. It’s selfish, to be honest. Because I like that feeling of stillness and being taken somewhere and not having to switch gears in my brain every two to 3.5 seconds. To just be in a space and let that wash over you.”
Listen to Black Cat below or order here.
At its inception in 2004, the Beavans created 8mm as a musical conduit informed by their love of film and the memories it creates and conveys, all while creating what might be best described as digital country noir. Two decades later, Radtke’s six-stringed sense of the appropriate has infused into the Beavans’ experiential sonic worldview (incorporating such contemporary manifestations as cinematic ambiance, subtle shoegaze, narcotic trip-hop and slightly askew synthetic vistas).
The Beavans are quick to acknowledge the contributions Radke has made to this next plane of 8mm’s mythology. “For this record Jonny and I mainly were creating cinematic soundscapes for Juliette’s storytelling,” Radtke says. “I think we’ve always been on the same page, which is really refreshing. When you’re collaborating with people, obviously it’s healthy to have constructive stuff but [8mm] just feels natural and effortless and it makes sense. And it’s the kind of music that I enjoy writing and enjoy listening to. Playing with Sean and Juliette is a reminder that if you find the people that make you happy and inspire you, you’ve got to embrace it and go with it. I think Black Cat is unique Because I didn’t feel the pressure that we had to live up to anything. We gave ourselves the room to be who we are and rely on our respective individual tastes as musicians and what we’ve all appreciated in the bands that we absolutely adore.”
“Johnny always has this sort of languid beauty,” begins Juliette, “There’s this soaring kind of sensuality to everything he does, even his movements onstage. Then Sean brings a little more aggression and sharper corners. They’re perfect foils for each other. And I think that energetically goes into the way they write, and the way they compose. It’s a perfect kind of puzzle piece.”
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