Lausse The Cat: The Mocking Stars Review
We all thought the cryptic cat had used up all nine lives - we were wrong. Seven years later, the greatest kitten in UK music returns.
For those of us who grew up orbiting the London alternative rap scene as teenagers, Lausse The Cat was almost mythological, a poetic wizard who disappeared just as quickly as he arrived. His lo-fi rap and jazz-infused storytelling felt like theatre for the disenchanted; tales of unemployment, heartbreak, and that peculiar lostness of being young and broke in the city. Now, after seven silent years, The Mocking Stars finally continues the world he built in The Girl, The Cat and The Tree, and it’s as magical, melancholic, and imaginative as we hoped.
From the opening spoken-word poem, nostalgia hits hard. That same smoky voice, the same delicate jazzy rhythm, and it’s comforting, like revisiting a dream you weren’t sure was real.
The prince of cats pulls you straight back into his cinematic universe, painting feelings effortlessly. Every lyric feels lifted from thoughts you’ve had but never articulated, a private melancholy made public.
The album follows the theatrical cat character adrift in a collapsing world - searching for meaning, love, and a sense of self while feeling out of step with everything around him.
Musically, it’s his richest work yet. Bossa nova grooves meet vibraphones and sax, jazz slowly dissolving into waves of electronic light.
Keep On Walking, drifts from familiar percussion to a digital heartbeat, highlighting the cat’s escape from the real world. Moonlight Waltz opens tenderly, layered vocals and violin, before twisting into something playful and surreal, like a jester waltzing through a dream sequence.
And then there’s The Mocking Stars, the title track: an 11-minute odyssey of longing, switching between English and French, anger and serenity. A violin sighs, a piano glows, and as a listener you just float. Its structure alone is breathtaking, so complex and sonically interesting, constantly morphing but never losing focus.
There’s an ache to this record that feels perfectly winter. You can picture yourself on a late-night bus, city lights flickering off wet glass, replaying memories you’d half-forgotten.
The storytelling is so vivid it’s almost visual, like leafing through an illustrated novel, each track a painting of its own. Ad-libs bring that world to life: thunder rolling in the distance, coins jingling, cats meowing - tiny cinematic details that pull you deeper into Lausse’s universe.
The Mocking Star Album Cover @Cal’s Castle (insta)
Other standout tracks include I.D.W.G.AJ, where the feline imagines his ideal life before snapping back to reality, a quiet reflection on escaping the monotony of a nine-to-five.
Then there’s Cackles of the Mad, a brief, unsettling fever dream disguised as a nursery rhyme, eerie in its simplicity and perfectly placed within the album’s strange, shifting world.
It’s both l and weighty, a bold experiment in sound and storytelling that somehow stays seamless. The Mocking Stars is, without question, one of the most beautifully crafted and conceptually ambitious projects of the year.
Lausse has always existed just outside of genre and fame, the UK’s best-kept secret. But make no mistake, this is a serious contender for album (and album art) of the year. The same artist behind his past visuals, returns with another stunning painting, keeping that visual consistency that makes Lausse feel more like a universe than a musician.
The mix of whimsy, introspection, and pure sonic elegance is why I fell in love with Lausse in the first place, and he’s picked up right where he left off. A whole hour of music that breathes long after it ends.
Selfishly, all I want is to hear this masterpiece live. After almost a decade of having this soundtrack my life, it would be something close to life-changing.
Optimistic yet melancholic, grounded yet otherworldly - The Mocking Stars reminds us why we ever fell for the cat in the first place. A true artist, reborn.
