Catfish and the Bottlemen – Suntitled Review

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Adding an “s” to the front of “untitled,” a masterful gambit from Catfish and the Bottlemen. Their return to the stage has been, for the most part, disastrous. From an uninspired Leeds Festival set to a series of tour date cancellations, it could surely not get worse for Van McCann and the backing band. In the words of Mick McCarthy: “It can.” Suntitled, the latest song from the band, is only available on EA FC 25’s soundtrack. No streaming service, at time of writing, hosts the song. No further updates are being given by the band, their label, or their management, on the state of this hinted-at new album. We live in fear of a new release. It is not as though their return song, Showtime, was any good. Middle of the road slop which, for those who did track down Suntitled, should be no surprise.  

Would anyone be shocked if this fresh Catfish and the Bottlemen were anything more? The usual thump of a sound they did well, and then never evolved. Suntitled is another piece of a two-part jigsaw puzzle, the other being softer acoustic stylings to make sure listeners can latch onto the ballad-like tones an indie band must trounce out on two songs of an album. Yet two songs into this non-album mess and Catfish and the Bottlemen are already losing steam. Slick production can only mask the lack of message, the tame meaning to be heard within, for so long. The worst part of Catfish and the Bottlemen is its lead. An ineffective and uninspired four-minute brush with the man who brought you The Balcony. There is a lick of irony to these lyrics, that suggest they are back in the race. But like a horse falling at the Grand National, the only sane thing to do would be to draw the curtain around Catfish. A messy song which reflects the collapse of the return.  

A song of losing faith and falling, where to, and what from, is not the point. Catfish and the Bottlemen writes a set of catchy and often thrilling instrumentals and backs it up with unfinished-sounding filler. Another loved-up, rocked-out song where the bust-ups are recognised as learning points. But what does Suntitled learn? Nothing, by the sounds of it. A dud of a song now, but ten years ago, when Catfish and the Bottlemen were last brushing with contemporary tones, this would have dominated poorly-planned indie Thursday nights up and down the country. But we have evolved as a species, beyond the need for relatively tame and lame guitar rock such as this. Suntitled sounds behind the times, an ineffective attempt at adapting a genre of indie rock which has been relegated to matchday background noise and early morning pub fodder.  

The problems lay not in the instrumentals but in the vocalist, in the lack of foresight or detail in his words. It is a middle-of-the-road song because the message presented is just that, monotone, to-do list-like writing. There is a fear of specifics because it would not only mean closing a door for dedicated listeners to self-insert them into this McCann-adjacent fantasy but because it would mean, for the first time, Catfish and the Bottlemen are opening up with some truth. There has never been a more urgent time to catch truth in song. Where their contemporaries are ever-changing the course of music, Catfish and the Bottlemen redundantly spend Suntitled observing what they always do. Like the many nameless women which filter through songs from this band, the repetition and breakdown are expected, rather than exciting. If it were not for the instrumentals, this would be a death knell in the Catfish and the Bottlemen return.