Broadcast / Tender Buttons / 2005
Black Cat
eerie, clipped, dreamlike unease
Broadcast build a short, incantatory piece out of fragmented imagery and folkloric allusion rather than narrative. The song circles a black cat as an omen-figure, pairing cryptic couplets with a flat, almost clinical refrain about discomfort witnessed in someone close.
superstition and omen surveillance/watching emotional discomfort witnessed secondhand folklore and fairy-tale allusion dissociation
Who's speaking
An observer's voice, addressing no one directly but reporting on a scene involving a third party in distress; the speaker seems detached, almost reciting rather than confessing, which makes the voice feel unreliable or trance-like.
What happens
There isn't a conventional story arc; instead the song accumulates a set of recurring images and phrases that orbit the idea of a black cat as a watching, fateful presence. Each verse offers a new fragment of myth or ritual imagery before collapsing back into the repeated observation of someone else's awkwardness, and the piece ends by stripping even that phrase down to its bare components.
How it's built
The song works in tight call-and-response blocks: a two-line verse of dense, allusive imagery, followed by a doubled statement of discomfort, followed by the chanted cat refrain repeated twice with its 'curiouser and curiouser' tag. This pattern repeats three times with only the verse content changing, then the final section strips the pattern down to the bare discomfort phrase alone, as if the ritual has exhausted itself.
Section by section
Opening verse
“Sapphire her burning eyes”
The song opens with a jewel-toned, almost blazon-like image that elevates a figure into something otherworldly or feline before any context is given, setting the tone of myth-making rather than storytelling.
First refrain pairing
“Awkwardness happening to someone you love”
This flat, prosaic statement cuts against the ornate verse imagery. Its clinical phrasing suggests the speaker is reporting discomfort rather than feeling it directly, creating distance between observer and observed.
Cat chant
“Curiouser and curiouser”
Borrowing the Alice in Wonderland phrase ties the black cat to a world where logic bends and transformation is imminent, reinforcing the cat as an omen of destabilization rather than a literal pet.
Masonic verse
The imagery here moves toward ritual and ancient hierarchy, linking the cat to secretive tradition and mortality; the pairing of a worm with a pharaoh suggests decay shadowing grandeur.
Mirror verse
“Mirror mirror on the wall”
Invoking the fairy-tale mirror incantation links the black cat to vanity, judgment, and fate-telling, while the call into the night suggests the speaker or figure is summoning something unseen.
Closing collapse
The final repetition drops the cat chant entirely and leaves only the bare phrase about someone else's discomfort, as though the ritual imagery has burned off and only the raw unease remains.
Craft
- anaphora
- The insistent repetition of the black cat line and the awkwardness line turns the song into something closer to a spell or chant than a sung narrative, reinforcing the sense of ritual.
- allusion
- References to a mirror incantation and to a phrase from Alice in Wonderland import associations of fate, vanity, and curiosity-as-danger without spelling out their relevance, inviting the listener to supply meaning.
- juxtaposition
- Ornate, almost esoteric imagery (gemstone eyes, masonic shadowing, pharaonic processions) sits against a plain, modern phrase about someone's awkwardness, creating friction between myth and mundane emotional observation.
- ellipsis/fragmentation
- The lyric withholds causal connections between images, forcing the listener to infer relationships rather than following an explained sequence.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the black cat as a traditional omen figure standing in for an undefined dread or transformation happening to someone the speaker cares about; the esoteric imagery (masonic, pharaonic, mirror-magic) builds a ritual atmosphere around witnessing someone else's private crisis without being able to name or fix it. An alternative reading takes the cat more literally as a liminal creature whose curious, watchful presence mirrors the listener's own uneasy fascination with someone else's pain, with the fairy-tale allusions functioning as decoration rather than symbolic machinery. The lyric's refusal to resolve into a clear statement makes both readings viable.
Context
Tender Buttons (2005) was recorded as a duo after earlier members left Broadcast, and the album is generally noted for a sparser, more electronic and unsettled sound than their earlier psychedelic-pop work. I don't have reliable specific biographical detail about the writing of this particular song, so this context should be taken as general rather than song-specific.
Listen for
- the shift in vocal tone between the dense imagistic verses and the flatter repeated refrain
- how the 'curiouser and curiouser' line is delivered, whether playful or ominous
- the way the song's final lines drop the chant and leave only the bare discomfort phrase
- any sonic texture (drones, percussion) that reinforces the ritual/chant feel of the repeated sections
About Broadcast
Broadcast were an English band formed in Birmingham in 1995 by Trish Keenan and James Cargill (bass). Their musical style blended elements of 1960s psychedelic songwriting with early electronic music and samples from esoteric sources.
1995 - present / Birmingham
Full biography and catalogue