Catatonia's calling us

Catatonia may be one of Britain's most successful bands; they may have given us two of 1998's greatest singles (Road Rage and Mulder and Scully), and one of its greatest albums (International Velvet); they may have been nominated for three Brits and have the most engaging lead singer to hit the charts since Blondie (Cerys Matthews: big performer, big voice, loved by men and women alike). But when it comes to music practice, the five-piece choose a tiny, school hall-style room in Pyle & District Leisure Centre, with a community group meeting going on upstairs.

Cerys - always the focus of media attention - looks as if she was born to be a star. At the photo-shoot, she acts the faux prima donna ("No pictures yet! I haven't got my ego on!"), talking to herself ("Why do I have nicotine stains on my toenails?"), giggling when asked to keep still, and demanding tequila, salt and a bottle of red wine. It's 11.30 a.m.

On stage, Cerys jumps around like a sexy cowgirl - as the photographer puts it, "she makes great shapes".

Cerys has become renowned for her quote-ability, for saying such things as "I want to be a dirtier version of Celine Dion"; and "Why do people fancy Leonardo DiCaprio? It's like eating Wotsits when you can have a big bowl of octopus in ink"; and "I like singing Welsh folk songs, because they have nice, perverted lyrics singing about cuckoos when they mean people's genitalia."

She's just bought a silver MG with red leather seats, and already, like Madonna, she doesn't need a surname. She's just Cerys. But she hasn't become a capital C Celebrity - at least, not yet. She still lives in Cardiff, her home town, sharing a house with her two younger brothers.

When she takes off her platform trainers and I remark on how tiny she seems without them, she says, "Famous people are always small in real life, aren't they?" It's as if she's one of us, not one of them. And when she empties out her hold-all she shows me a pile of second-class-stamped letters she needs to send. Virgin Direct, "for a PEP", British Gas, Bombay Duck - "That's for an interior-design catalogue, £3 enclosed" - and some hosiery company in Liverpool: "I sent off for a free pair of tights, and they sent me two pairs, one free and one they said I had to pay for. I'm writing to tell them that's a scam! I'm sending the other pair back, I'm not paying." So, Catatonia are the sort of band who rehearse in Pyle & District Leisure Centre, and Cerys is the sort of pop star who sends away for free tights.

Catatonia were formed in 1990, when Mark Roberts heard Cerys, then 21, busking outside Debenham's in Cardiff. Until then, Cerys had never really stuck at anything. "I've done a lot of things," she says. "I worked on a fruit market, I worked on the beaches, I trained to be a nurse, I dropped out of that - I dropped out of most things - I went back to school, did some A-levels, went to college, dropped out of college, went on the dole, met Mark, started song-writing, concentrated on that, recorded some songs, got lucky, made some videos, learnt a lot, released our first EP (For Tinkerbell), which was the NME's Single Of The Week - and it's all been downhill from there." "My inspiration wasn't really any particular singer or recording; it was more participation," she says. "I didn't realise this until a friend said to me, `You've always said in interviews that you have no musical background at all. "Bollocks: you lot never shut up!' And he's right - my mum would be singing, `And I'm your lady, and you are my man', at nine o'clock in the morning. All Radio 2-style songs." Radio 2? "Actually, I want to be on Radio 2,' she giggles. "I do. I hate the idea of barriers in music."

She has said before that she's never known what's cool and what isn't. "Taste should be individual. When I was growing up, I liked Toyah Willcox - `So what if I dye my hair, I've still got a brain up there!' Then I went intense and morbid and was into Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan and David Bowie and Smokey Robinson, but I never liked the Smiths."

And now? "I love Fatboy Slim, like everyone else, and I love Lauryn Hill's voice. And Dolly Parton, she's a hell of a brilliant songwriter."

And so is Cerys: Mulder And Scully is a witty, of-the-moment reference to pop culture as a metaphor for emotional confusion; but the emotion is as important to the song as the pop. "I'd rather be jumping ship/I find myself jumping straight in/If my head is full of you/Is there nothing I can do?/Must we all march in two by two by two?" She sings it like she means every breath of it.

And Road Rage - another metaphor, apparently about tempers in cars and millennial angst, but also, of course, about emotional anger: "And it's you, boy, you're driving me crazy/Thinking you may be losing your mind." There is a song from the first album, Way Beyond Blue, called You've Got a Lot to Answer For, that contains the best ever evocation of a pregnancy test: "If it turns to blue, what are we going to do?/If it stays on white, would it be alright?/If it all turns sour, it's too late/The CSA are bound to find you soon."

Cerys's voice, meanwhile, has been described as "a cross between Hi-De-Hi's Ruth Madoc and Marilyn Monroe" (Q magazine) and "exactly like Shirley Bassey puking five pints of Jack Daniels into the Grand Canyon through a megaphone during an earthquake" (NME). Suffice to say it is sometimes tiny and childlike, and at other times so rasping and tough it shakes plates off tables. Her voice has an emotional range that suits perfectly the emotional complexity of these songs, this age.

Catatonia play Dublin Castle on May 3rd at 7.30 p.m.