In 1966,
Norma Tanega had a worldwide hit with the title track of her debut album,
Walkin' My Cat Named Dog. A bouncy number that blended the au courant sounds of folk-pop and New York soul-pop (a nod to her involvement with
New Voice, the label of
Four Seasons producer
Bob Crewe), "Walkin''' may have been her lone moment of mainstream success, but the rest of the album makes a strong case for why
Tanega remained a cult favorite years later. The same independence -- as well as
Tanega's distinctive outlook and matter-of-fact contralto -- runs through all of its songs, even on more seemingly straightforward ones like the lilting, joyous "I Am the Sky'' and "No Stranger Am I," a piece of 5/4 chamber pop that
Dusty Springfield covered when she and
Tanega were a couple. When
Tanega leans into her perspective as an outsider,
Walkin' My Cat Named Dog really comes into its own. "Hey Girl," an interpolation of
Lead Belly's "In the Pines," gives the song's classic tale of jealousy a queer twist and foreshadows the sound of
Bobbie Gentry's
The Delta Sweete. "Don't Touch" is deceptively breezy, with
Tanega singing the praises of staying far away from people in a come-hither croon. On "A Street That Rhymes at 6 A.M.," she sets her declarations of nonconformity ("syncopate your life and move against the grain") to hip grooves, then leaves them bare on "What Are We Craving?," a lumbering, elliptically political number that could be a cover of a
Shaggs song (and was covered by
Thee Oh Sees nearly 50 years later). Then there's "You're Dead,"
Walkin' My Cat Named Dog's first and arguably finest song. Its driving acoustic strumming provides the perfect foil for sardonic lyrics like "when you smile and it tears your face/it's time for the inhuman race," and
Tanega's wry detachment sounded just as relevant in the 2010s and 2020s, when it was used as the theme song to the movie and TV series What We Do in the Shadows. Since the music world didn't really know what to do with her in the '60s and early '70s,
Tanega followed her wayward muse and became a teacher, painter, and percussionist with experimental groups like
Hybrid Vigor. In other words, she syncopated her life and moved against the grain, but not before making this wonderfully idiosyncratic album. ~ Heather Phares
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