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Maggie the Cat: Femme Fatale Extraordinaire

Today marks the release of Maggie the Cat’s second solo single, “I Love You and I’ve Got a Gun.” For those of you who are new to the work of this femme fatale extraordinaire, she’s formerly the lead singer of South London’s witchiest glam-rock group Madonnatron, and currently flying solo under the moniker, Maggie the Cat.

Her new single, “I Love You and I’ve Got a Gun,” showcases her signature flair for film noir drama interwoven with deeper themes of power, baring the psychological struggles that so often accompany love affairs, and threading her work with a feminist undercurrent.

The impetus for the song occurred in 2019, when Maggie the Cat’s two-year old son, who’d just begun to speak, toddled up to her and announced: “I love you, and I’ve got a gun.”

“I thought, ‘Oh my God!’ ” Maggie remembers. “A: why’s he talking about guns? And B: that’s amazing. So I held onto that (phrase) as an idea, and I wrote the song.” Stefania (of Madonnatron) suggested that Maggie might find inspiration for the song’s lyrical content in the Italian B-movie, “The Girl with the Pistol,” starring Monica Vitti.

” …I watched the film and I loved it,” Maggie explains. “It went so well with the title, I just literally wrote the lyrics about the film, and about the character in the film: her madness, her obsession. Following on from Madonnatron, there’s nothing like a bit of amorous killing. I’ve worked on it from time to time over the last couple years and it’s morphed from being a guitar song into this kind of pop, arabesque thing, that now will grace the airwaves.”

A haunting, fretful ballad with gorgeous instrumentation influenced by both modern North African pop music and traditional rai, “I Love You and I’ve Got a Gun,” is ultimately a powerful blend of ‘a tale as old as time,’ with the strong left hook of a crime thriller.

You can follow Maggie’s adventures on Instagram @maggiethecatmusic and @trashmouthrecords. Her latest single, “I Love You and I’ve Got a Gun,” is available to stream on all platforms, and available for purchase on Bandcamp.

Why We Love: Maggie the Cat

And just like that, summer’s over and it’s October, the month when spooks and ghouls roam the earth freely. Prime time for the debut solo release from a founding member of south London’s finest and freakiest gang of voodoo high priestesses, Madonnatron.

If you’ve heard Madonnatron, then you’ve heard Maggie. Her voice is the lynchpin of the band’s signature sound, the gathering force that holds it all together, powerful and hypnotic. She’s recently struck out on her own, embarking on a solo career under her Madonnatron moniker, “Maggie the Cat.”

With her Farrah Fawcett hair, glam rock eye makeup and brooding, melancholy, stare, she explained the evolution of her solo work thusly: “Maggie the Cat emerged over the last few years like the mutant love child of covid and my long running obsession with Elizabeth Taylor, most notably her character of that name from the Tennessee Williams play, ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.’

Her debut single, “I Think Last Night I Killed A Man,” is a definite shift from Madonnatron’s harsh, witch-punk sound. The production is more technically intricate: “… centered around a lot of quite dark, melancholic symphonic refrains juxtaposed with 80s synth sounds and disco drum patterns. The vocals are something of an id festival and may have ventured into other realms in places as I’m shamelessly emotional and the voice is a real channel for the soul, I think,” Maggie explains.

“Bianca Jagger rides in on a horse any second…” she teased on Instagram, days before the single’s release. A fitting comparison; the stylization is very Studio 54, albeit with a touch of what Maggie the Cat calls, “general murderous content,” a sinister speciality of supposed sweetness followed by violence, honed in the service of years of lyric writing for Madonnatron. Her blog describes the forthcoming album as “…simultaneously bewitching, erotic, menacing, and occasionally chilling (although never without mischief.)”

Trashmouth Records, the infamous New Malden-based independent record label that nurtured the raw, loose-cannon power of cult favorite rock n’ roll bands such as Warmduscher, the Fat White Family (and of course, Madonnatron) into musical adulthood, are backing Maggie the Cat’s solo efforts.

You can purchase “Last Night I Think I Killed A Man,” via Bandcamp at the link provided below. It is available to stream on all platforms.

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