Catfish and the Bottlemen – Showtime Review

Returning nostalgia should not be a grand call to arms if it serves as nothing more than club filler. Catfish and the Bottlemen are just that, the stripped-back black-on-white approach for their album covers synonymous with people who want a tattoo of some vague piece of indie-pitched stereotypes. Their showy and bland indie rock is back with Van McCann at the helm, as new single Showtime builds toward the anxieties and usual fears of someone getting back out there after five years without so much as a single interesting topic to dispel to listeners. Recapture the audience which never grew up and move on with them – it will be easy enough to do that when sharing a headliner slot with Gerry Cinnamon and Liam Gallagher. We stand stuck in the past, waiting for whatever slop Showtime is.  

Slop is the correct word anyway, the trivialities of moving on the Catfish and the Bottlemen sound is lost on McCann who dives right back into the mid-2000s with hopeful glee. But the sell-by date is long past and the thumping tones of being out on the lash and crashing through life with the indifference of their previous releases is harder now their fans have mortgages and partners. It is hard to suspend this when Showtime sounds like an anthemic tune to blast out of a newly built home, grey carpets and all. Muffled, indifferent and hoping to rely on some danceable pop guitar riffs, the effort just is not there. The usual clangs of repetitive instrumentals in place of anything liberating from a lyrical side. It has been the Catfish and the Bottlemen formula for some time. Why change what worked eight years ago? 

A lack of growth is the real trouble. The last year has taught listeners a dive into the live circuit is all about coaxing nostalgia into place but with the benefit of new releases to muscle its way into the top slots. Showtime feels like a marriage between two eras. A signal shot up into the skies to announce the return of a band whose sound has not changed. Does Showtime do anything The Balcony and other songs from the band do? No. There is praise to be made for the band keeping consistent with their past but such a time offered little to those who wanted more than a club stomper to shake themselves to. There is even less to Showtime, the whining electronics and the wailing guitar is an empty and soulless endeavour and even McCann struggles to emote these moments properly. 

Sounding anthemic and being anthemic are two different tones. Lump this one in with Canter. Songs which sound big but are not themselves huge turns of form. Showtime may mark the return of Catfish and the Bottlemen but it deviates very little from what you already know and hear. Indie rock has moved on well beyond the likes of Catfish and the Bottlemen. Just hear something from Sam Fender, Courting or The Last Dinner Party to see how the genre has been broken down, rebuilt and influenced by the 1980s pop narrative. Catfish and the Bottlemen are still the lads band appealing to the Dark Fruits crew despite there being little call for it now, unless you were responsible for booking TRNSMT and Leedsfest.