The British music press is well-known and much maligned for its make-'em-and-break-'em attitude.

So when Brian Futter sees the UK's next great shining hope smiling confidently from the cover of one the weekly music mags, all he can do is shake his head and smile to himself.

"It's a wry smile," clarifies The Catherine Wheel's 35-year-old guitarist during a phone interview from his hotel room in San Francisco.

"Because usually it's: 'So-and-so takes America!' when they've really just come over to New York and played CBGB's to 20 people.

"It's a con, the whole thing is a bloody con. So all I can do is smile to myself wryly."

That's because Futter has been through it all before. After the release of a four-song EP, She's My Friend, in 1991, the Great Yarmouth, England-based Catherine Wheel became the latest celebrated band du jour.

"I thought it was a big conspiracy," he admits.

"I thought everyone was just taking the mickey out of us.... It was very strange and I was very suspicious."

Despite the early accolades, by the time CW's 1992 debut full-length, Ferment, was released the press had already bored of its new discovery.

"We had our week's fame and then we were dropped," he says in a sharply cynical tone.

"It's a bad thing, a really bad thing, I think. But as soon as we weren't the next big thing, we could relax and get on with the music that we wanted to do without having to completely refer to NME or Melody Maker every week, which is a very sad thing.

"They've got a lot of power."

Still, Futter admits without those magazines, Catherine Wheel may not even exist today.

"Because the scene is so vibrant in the UK, they give young bands a chance to step up on that ladder, like it did for us. So, it's got a good side and a bad side."

While the sweeping, hook-laden grandeur of the band's 1993 sophomore release, Chrome, didn't translate into big sales in Britain, Catherine Wheel attracted a large, loyal cult following in North America.

Hoping to work from that fanbase, the group -- which plays Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium tomorrow as part of the Summersault tour -- released the harder-edged Happy Days that spawned two minor hits.

Unfortunately, the momentum didn't last and the band again found itself struggling sales-wise with its next two albums, Like Cats and Dogs and Adam and Eve.

"It's very frustrating from a financial point of view," says Futter, who continued his co-writing relationship with singer Rob Dickinson (who, by the way, is the cousin of Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson) on Catherine Wheel's newest album, Wishville.

"But you just have to accept it and carry on.... We've never had a tremendously successful songwriting formula as it were, so we're afforded the artistic luxury of being able to do anything.

"Sometimes financially that's a big pain in the a-- not being successful, but artistically it's a bit of a bonus."

The driving, yet shimmering rock of Wishville took about a year to write and record and according to Futter, he and Dickinson didn't waste much energy trying to write hit singles.

"We had a devil-may-care attitude on this one," he says.

"We think every record is going to be our last one, so we don't really try to please people. I think we've done that once, we tried to write a single and that was an absolute disaster. We've done that before or since."