The Universal Sound of The Cat Empire

You’re not imagining things - Melbourne’s most electrifying, hip-moving jazz, funk, soul fusion act, The Cat Empire have been littering lineup announcements across Australia recently.

The end of the year sees the refreshed band, led by original members Felix Riebel and Ollie McGill, head Big Pineapple Festival and Queenscliff Music Festival, with further announcements into 2026 for the All-Australian artist touring festival Red Hot Summer Tour and Winnipeg Folk Festival. That’s all following a gigantic run of shows venturing across the UK and Europe with 28 shows to be exact, multiple of which are sold out. 

Queenscliff Music Festival

WHEN: 28 – 30 NOV

WHERE: QUEENSCLIFF MUSIC FESTIVAL

Keep connected to your live music scene here.

It’s a year for touring for the band. They played a hotly demanded Australian run of shows in celebration of their latest album title Bird In Paradise across August and September as well, with the top of the year seeing the band exhausting their way through North America for a whopping 32 shows. Are you keeping count, because there is more – add on three album launch events, multiple festival runs including Feastival Falls Creek in February, and a Live in the Maldives resort takeover. *Insert deep breath*

Yes, The Cat Empire have been scratching all the surfaces when it comes to shows, but after over twenty years of touring they wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It’s never ever the shows that feels like the effort. You know in some ways, shows are kind of the release.”

Felix Riebel explains, “You see musicians in their 70’s getting up on stage and you see it in their eyes, it’s like this playful, childlike nature that takes over. There’s a freedom in being on stage and playing to audiences. That’s how it feels for me, that the music makes me feel something and we get to make people feel something. It’s for the right reasons and we’re still just as excited to be on the stage and making music as we were at the start.”

For The Cat Empire it all started with Riebel and McGill – along with Ryan Monro who played his retirement show in 2021 – and a little act called Jazz Cat. Building from their sophisticated trained playing approach, adding experimentation and lacing it with liveliness, The Cat Empire have crafted a sound that continues to evade genre pigeonholing. Their music feels just as comfortable on a rock lineup as it does as a folk festival festival. Their talents lend themselves to acclaimed showcases in jazz chambers but translates into the intimate international settings of a flamenco bar in Barcelona. 

“The thing that really put us in good stead creatively over the journey has been that we have a sense of a strong Australian identity in terms of where we’ve come from and how we speak and things like that back in Australia, and then we introduce audiences here to things that we gravitate towards overseas – the people, the sounds, the cultures, and those relationships become part of the music. It all influences the music.”

For their latest offering, the March release of Bird In Paradise, the band pulled from those global relations to guide the songwriting process.

“From a musical perspective I would say that Bird In Paradise is the most obvious example of friendships informing the framework for songs. It’s the friendships that we made from people from other places, and those kind of early sparks of inspiration come from when you listen to new music and just like a dream that you remember it again and that’s something you can listen back to and you’re immediately drawn back into that past relationship. Those friendships hold meaning in our music space.” 

The rich and effervescent feathers of Bird In Paradise this time around considered the bands Spanish sisters, Señorita, Señoras and Señors. The feline fusion flexed their versatility through ensuring the album would hold up with their audiences in Spain just as much as it would with their Melbourne market.

“Ultimately our first priority is being good musicians because that’s where the actual life is for us, you know colliding with an audience and playing well, but we build from being together. For Bird In Paradise we really did try to lean into something that would stand up if we played in the south of Spain to those audiences. We said if this album is going to stand up, it’s really important for the genres and things like that we explore that we want to do it well.”

It’s all a bulletproof framework for The Cat Empire; making music that makes them happy, draws from their life experience, and becomes bigger than life on stage. 

Witness it all unfold at this year’s Queenscliff Music Festival. The Cat Empire will be playing on Saturday 29 November, alongside Thelma Plum, The Waifs, Didirri and Rowena Wise, and more.

Head here to find more information and ticketing on Queenscliff Music Festival.