Catfish & the Bottlemen - Soundcheck (Single Review)

Unfortunately due to my record player undergoing sad unforeseen circumstances, within its life where his needle is now broken - I am unable to review Kula Shaker's new '2.0' album; as promised last week. Moving forward, that has resulted in me discovering some new music to hopefully bless your ears with; which happens to be Catfish & the Bottlemen's new single 'Soundcheck'. 

During the lifetime of my music blog, I have reviewed Catfish's full debut album and one of their gigs back in March 2015. However, they ended up getting very over-played and boring due to them bringing out no new material and doing several tours just off their first album... Resulting in fans being ecstatic when rumours were going around of a new track, and then when they finally released their new single, 'Soundcheck' on the 16th of February 2016 it didn't quite have the response I was hoping to see. Fans appeared to be rather disappointed, therefore I thought that I would judge it for myself. For any readers that have never heard of this band before; they are a four piece indie-rock band from Llanduno, North Wales and the foursome consists of; Van McCann on lead vocals, Johnny Bond on the lead guitar, Benji Blakeway on bass and Bob Hall on the drums. The foursome hit the big time in the UK with their popular track; 'Cocoon' - which was off their debut album 'The Balcony'.

The song cuts in straight away with McCann's contradicting voice; that tends to sound relaxed but uptight at the same time. As the intro progresses I heard slight influences of Circa Waves, but on the other hand Catfish still have that strong sound to them whereby you can appreciate each musician individually as they all get their own time to shine. On the contrary, they have not really moved forward or progressed their sound since 'The Balcony' ... As I begin to thoroughly listen to the lyrics I came to the realisation of how much of a badly written song it is; the band are used as a cover-up to distract listeners from realising how much of a badly written song that it happens to be...

"And if only for the sake of it I could chill you out and drive us through the night to your sisters. You can fall asleep with my jacket as a cover, and wake up just to join me smoke."

On the bright side, they do have a catchy chorus regardless of how badly written the song may be ...

"I wanted everything at once, until you blew me out my mind - now I don't need nothing!"

In conclusion, I did expect more from this band as they pulled it out of the bag with their first album, and after fans have listened to the same tracks over and over again with dedication in the wait for a new release - I am not surprised that they are disappointed with the outcome of their new single. They needed something new, something refreshing, something different and raw. It is just another song, about another female with a repetitive chorus... They need to re-create their image or at least come out with something fresh! The indie-rock competition has been piping up over recent years, and if they don't pull it out of the bag soon - then people will get tired and bored of listening to the same old meaningless bollocks. I mean; take Arctic Monkeys for example, and look at the difference from their first album to their last and every album inbetween they are all different, refreshing material and Turner also happens to be a brilliant lyricist and that is why they have remained so successful for such a long period of time.  This track would have made a great addition to 'The Balcony' last year, but I fail to see success within their new album as it will just be incredibly similar to 'The Balcony' but worse ...

4/10