The Ride by Catfish and the Bottlemen - Review

British indie-rockers deliver an emotion driven sophomore album

Tracklist:

1) 7

2) Twice

3) Soundcheck

4) Postpone

5) Anything

6) Glasgow

7) Red

8) Oxygen

9) Emily

10) Heathrow

11) Outside

****

In September 2014, British indie rock band Catfish and the Bottlemen released their first album The Balcony. It was a loud and heavy rock album with even louder "party bangers" to get a crowd formed and excited. Fast forward to 2016 - The Balcony has now sold over half a million copies worldwide, the excitement that was once needed to get Catfish and the Bottlemen going has gone into overdrive, there are more live shows being added by the minute and the second album, which was written well over 3 years ago, is due out very soon and expected to blow the first out of the water. But did the new album supply the demand?

There are a lot of similarities between The Balcony and the new album The Ride which was released last Friday (May 27) - first of all, the band have stuck to keeping all of their song titles one word long - a trend that lends nothing to the actual music but keeps with an aesthetic and a theme that has become of the band. The final song on the album Outside carries a similar vibe to the final song on The Balcony, Tyrants, in the sense that it is a song that can completely shut down a live set, in a good way of course.

Despite these similarities, The Ride is nothing like The Balcony. It is an album fuelled by emotion of the romantic kind rather than the sex kind and not short of a cracking guitar solo. The track Anything is the best example of this - the guitar solo at the end will leave you speechless!

Oxygen has a opener that sounds like a little something like She's Electric by Oasis - it's heavy, energetic and incredibly 90's rock - truly something else. It is full of promise musically but lyrically, it does not live up to the standard the rest of the album has to offer. Heathrow, one of two slow jams, however, is a lyrical gift, telling of a romance within the travels and hectic lifestyle lead singer Van McCann has formed for himself. There is a beautiful vulnerability within the lyrics in the line "She was a different league and I was nothing much" - a vulnerable side to Van we hear within a lot of lyrics on this album. A vulnerability that is both startling the original fans formed from the loud, abrupt nature of The Balcony but also compelling them closer to his charm.

The Balcony was the party, The Ride is the emotional talk you have with your new found friends at the party at 4 in the morning. A second album that delivers a mature sound and lyrics, an evolution of Catfish whilst still keeping some familiarities. A calm and collected follow up album. 

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