Katrina & the Waves

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that there are no second acts in American life. He may have been right, but luckily for Katrina & the Waves, they either never read Fitzgerald, or the Anglo half of their Anglo-American lineup made them immune from this pattern. With a charismatic lead singer fronting a band pulled together by guitarist Kimberley Rew (late of the Soft Boys), who could write songs like nobody's business, they seemed tailor-made for success. And they did briefly cut a swathe across pop music in Europe, America, and around the world, achieving some serious success of their own with a pair of catchy, hook-laden songs, "Going Down to Liverpool" (which was first a hit as a cover by the Bangles) and "Walking on Sunshine." Their initial mass popularity (especially in America) was relatively brief, but their history and their range of good songs also extended a lot longer than most listeners are aware. In 1981, in the wake of the Soft Boys' breakup, Rew landed in the Waves, an Anglo-American quartet featuring Katrina Leskanich (guitar, vocals), Vince de la Cruz (bass), and Rew's longtime friend Alex Cooper (drums). They tried it with Rew as lead singer but that wasn't a role that the guitarist/composer enjoyed -- instead, he moved Leskanich to the lead singer spot. The group became Katrina & the Waves to give it a special identity, at a time when there weren't a lot of bands with female lead singers. They spent two years working under the radar of the major labels, which had scarcely noticed the Soft Boys, never mind this quartet with the weird guitar-driven pop songs. They found a home with Attic Records, an independent label that had issued the Soft Boys' recordings in Canada, which allowed the band to avoid oblivion in favor of mere obscurity. They started to...