I was a big fan of The Balcony, Catfish and the Bottlemen’s debut, but I was worried the band was going to be a one-trick pony. After all, much of their sound is reminiscent of the pop-punk style that was all the range about a decade ago. For some people, the band arrived to late to the genre; for others, they’re part of its revival.
My take is simple: Catfish and the Bottlemen, regardless of their genre trappings, make good music. The Ride continues in that tradition, with similar songs about relationships and bad decisions, as well as making amends and moving on. It’s all familiar territory for the band, and for pop punk in general.
I think The Ride is stronger than their debut, although gathering from the early reviews I might be one of the few who hold that opinion. The Balcony was a great record, but The Ride feels more self-assured. Listen to the first three tracks off the new record: they’re powerful anthems that are meant to be sung along to.
This all makes sense: the music they were making before always had elements of this, particularly in the choruses, but with The Ride they’re ditching many of the staccato-like verses that littered their debut.
Soundcheck in particular is a great example of this: the verse isn’t musically complicated, but the crux of the track hangs on vocalist Van McCann’s singing. The song is wholly memorable, and it doesn’t need a lot of instrumental complexity to be that way. These are crowd pleasers.
A lot of bands struggle with this “phase,” as they grow in fame from small clubs to giant stadiums. I find myself writing about this frequently, because it’s where a lot of bands get “stuck” as they struggle to capture the good parts of their sound and get bigger. Catfish and the Bottlemen manage to pull it off.
Tracks like Oxygen still hint at what was their before: a guitar lick dominates the verse, with a subdued drum kick, until the chorus kicks in and takes over the track. But now the band is much more self-assured about it, able to focus on their strengths. Years of live performance have taught them what works and doesn’t work.
If anything, The Ride feels like a record of streamlining and refinement. It’s a welcome sophomore attempt from Catfish and the Bottlemen that is, in my mind, an improvement over their already-excellent debut. The Ride is destined to become one of the albums of the summer — play this with the windows rolled down while you’re driving down the expressway.