Catatonia - Stone By Stone

JUL 23 2001 · 12:00

Catatonia - Stone By Stone (2001) Era: Post-Britpop / Cool Cymru Twilight (2001) - Final era of Welsh alternative rock's mainstream moment; released as the band's last-ever single amid dissolution rumours and personal crisis High curatorial value as the sole visual promotional document from Catatonia's final studio album and the band's last-ever single. The video functions simultaneously as a promotional artefact and an inadvertent valediction, the abandonment-of-instruments closing shot, documented in Wikipedia's album article, gives it unusual symbolic weight. Represents the end-point of Cool Cymru's mainstream visibility and is essential for any comprehensive archive of Welsh popular music visual culture 1992–2001. Context: Released on 23 July 2001 on the Blanco y Negro label, 'Stone by Stone' was the sole single from Catatonia's fourth and final album, Paper Scissors Stone. It peaked at number 19 on the UK singles chart, making it the band's last chart entry. The single appeared during a period of acute instability: singer Cerys Matthews was in treatment for alcohol addiction and nervous exhaustion, forcing the cancellation of the band's planned UK tour. The video's closing image, band members walking away from their instruments, reads as an elegiac, self-aware farewell to the Cool Cymru movement Catatonia had helped define. The NME's dismissive one-out-of-ten review reflected a critical consensus that the Britpop era was over, yet the video's warm visual energy and rapid performance editing project defiant vitality rather than resignation. Director notes: The video was released in July 2001 to accompany the single on the Blanco y Negro label. Wikipedia's article on the Paper Scissors Stone album notes that the video's ending features the band members all abandoning their instruments and walking away, widely interpreted as an implicit acknowledgement of the band's imminent dissolution, confirmed on 21 September 2001. No production company, director, or DOP credit has been located in searched sources.