“Yeah, that rock’n’roll. It seems like it’s faded away sometimes but it will never die. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Alex Turner’s Brit Awards speech earlier this year now appears to be somewhat of a Mystic Meg style observation of the potential renaissance of rock’n’roll.
Garage rock/blues duo Royal Blood recently topped the UK Album Chart at the first time of asking, while Llandudno’s Catfish and The Bottlemen now look to further tighten a grip on the public’s rekindled adoration for the genre with their own long awaited debut, ‘The Balcony‘.
The band’s story is one that belies a seemingly juvenile surface aesthetic, consisting of sperm-themed logos and a name which sounds more like a fairground sideshow. The reality, however, is a refreshingly humble, against-all-odds tale which began with the inception of lead singer Van McCann as a test tube baby in Australia, before his parents relocated to the sleepy North Wales seaside coastal town of Llandudno in which the group have relentlessly traversed from the A55 for gig duties in recent years, in the hope of one day escaping small town isolation.
This unlikely dream now appears to be hovering into view from tantalising fantasy to a genuine hive of excitement across the country; an impending sell out UK tour cementing a steady accumulation of Zane Lowe and Steve Lamacq certified radio and social media buzz the likes of which has not been seen since the launch of Arctic Monkeys’ debut ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not‘ almost a decade ago. Is this the band our newly impassioned generation has been crying out for? They certainly make a rallying case.
The impossibly strong first half of the album presents a series of fully formed indie rock anthems, drenched in youthful exuberance, McCann’s immediately engaging and zealous vocal style announcing the delicately plucked guitar intro of ‘Homesick‘, eventually jerking back and forth between a crushing power chord chorus and the quieter moments that are an almost instrumental reflection on the track’s themes of a turbulent relationship where the intensity of emotion is repeatedly being questioned.
The now immortal lines of familiar pre-album single ‘Kathleen‘ in ‘You’re Sympatico’ launch the song as a palm muted, doe eyed ode to a romantic interest that appears to cut above the whimsical ups and downs of daily drudgery, before revealing a fervent chorus of stuttered reverb distortion over which McCann warbles gut wrenching cries of internal wrangling.
The quiet/loud Nirvana-esque song structure continues on Radio 1 A-listed and New York balcony penned ‘Cocoon‘, a track which articulates an overriding notion of frustration in the presence of friends when only craving more intimate moments, while the swell of the guitar breakdowns act as the metaphorical cry to arms in ensuring nothing gets in the way of a blossoming romance.
A breaking of the previous song structure mould is most welcome in the form of ‘Fallout‘, providing the strongest evidence yet that the band are capable of rearranging the traditional song format with the launch of an exhilaratingly unexpected second chorus when lead guitars fade out and McCann wryly references his mode of origin in the repeated lines, ‘I was a test tube baby, that’s why nobody gets me’.
Bass heavy standout ‘Pacifier‘ builds to a crescendo before introducing perhaps the strongest lyrical segment on the album when exclaiming, ‘You don’t know how it feels, to lose something you’ll never have and never will’, as part of a crushingly critical rebuke to unrequited love. ‘Hourglass‘ enters at the halfway point as somewhat of an anomaly in its guise as a heart wrenching acoustic ballad which recalls the contemplative yearning of Bombay Bicycle Club’s ‘A Different Kind Of Fix‘.
After a run of tracks which form the cornerstone of many of the best rock albums down the years, we are privy to some of Catfish’s more unknown musings in the form of ‘Business‘ and ‘26‘, in which the former provides another pleasant tribute to youthful fondness, while the latter doesn’t quite rise above the admittedly high bar set down by the album to this point.
The mastering of old tracks breeds new life into fan favourites such as ‘Rango‘, providing a simmering slow burner in its faint build up before the inevitable explosive chorus unleashes the raw power of the band once more. Closing tracks ‘Sidewinder‘ and ‘Tyrants‘ offer both a Milburn testament in the form of an exaggeratively swaggered northern vocal.
It remains to be seen whether Catfish can grow into a band capable of chameleonic shifts in their sound as the Arctic Monkeys have expertly achieved over the years, but for now this album offers precisely all that is required of them at this juncture.
‘The Balcony’ provides a sonic reference for the youth of today while nostalgic elders can bask in the wide eyed observational imperfections of adolescent romance.
