Kevin Bronson on September 4th, 2013

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A year of occasional, consistently exhiliarating shows has done nothing to dampen enthusiasm for Nightmare & the Cat’s major-label debut. From seeing them live, you got the feeling that the L.A.-based quintet, built around the songs of brothers Sam and Django Stewart, could sound like anything they wanted – pop, rock, soul, folk, British, American – and often did. The Stewarts, of course, have the bloodlines (they are the sons of the Eurhythmics’ Dave Stewart and Shakespears Sister’s Siobhan Fahey) and in their early days after coming to L.A. from London, they earned some attention for their individual projects, Django James & the Midnight Squires when he was still teenager and older sibling Samuel for his solo work. Now the Stewarts have teamed up with bandmates Scotty Henson, Claire Acey and Spike Phillips, as well as producer Eric Valentine, for an EP that’s due Sept. 17. “Simple,” which will also be the title of the band’s 2014 full-length, recalls some of the made-for-arenas Britpop that swirled round in 1990s. It’s certainly a long way from the band’s indie release in 2011. Singer and frontman Django seems to have been born arena-ready, and it sounds like everybody else in Nightmare & the Cat is up to the task too.

||| Stream: “Simple”

||| Live: Nightmare & the Cat plays tonight at the Echo.

Photo from June’s Chinatown Summer Nights by Carl Pocket