The Balance - Catfish And The Bottlemen: Review

Catfish And The Bottlemen

are a Welsh rock band that rose to prominence in 2014 when their debut album The Balcony blew up in the wake of the Arctic Monkeys' 2013 album AM inspiring a market for polished throwback rock and roll sounds the year prior. The band capitalized on the hype with some notable singles and the album ultimately going platinum, before following it up with The Ride in 2016. Despite more initial commercial appeal, the album received mixed reviews and the band was quiet for two years before releasing four singles in the lead up to The Balance. 

Review By Lavender:

Unlike some people who were maybe a bit too obsessed with AM, I never really pictured Catfish and The Bottlemen somehow saving rock and roll. The Balcony is a solid rock album that lacks life and variety but makes up for it with some tight and catchy songwriting and great energetic performances. Unfortunately The Ride took a very different approach that many we're not a fan of. I actually liked this album more than most given that the ideas are much less commonplace for contemporary rock music, but even I was able to admit that this thing had its flaws when it came to its tame instrumentals and aimless songs. Especially after I was split on the singles and none of them truly blew me away I didn't have sky high expectations for The Balance and much like I anticipated the album sounds like the manifesto of a band hoping to be forgotten. 

Longshot is the lead single, opening track and big hit from the project so it is telling just how little risks the track takes. The verses are compelling but the explosion into the hook falls pretty flat as well as the hook itself being mildly catchy but mostly just forgettable. What saves this song is a pretty tight bridge with some excellent guitar work in the end that heightens up the chorus and leaves the song on a good note. The next single was Fluctuate, which features some more engaging performances but is a painfully by the numbers rock track. Given how conventional it is you kind of have to leave it up to the performances to sell it and they really don't set the band apart that much from their contemporaries.

The only single I flat out didn't like at all was 2all. A horrily underwritten and uninspired by the numbers rock song that I guarantee everybody will have forgotten out within a month. The song is so dreadfully boring that I have to connect it to some other songs here. Sidetrack and Mission could be effectively placed in the tracklist of any radio friendly rock bands of the 2000's and nobody would blink an eye. Moments on this project that are chasing after rock trends that have been dead and cliched for years still blow my mind and make the bands first two albums like like Black Sabbath's Paranoid. 

The final single was the only one that I outright liked a lot. Comversation is a jammy alt-rock tune with a great hook and a sharp lead guitar, even given that this is one of the best tracks on the album, it wouldn't be much more than a solid album track for some of the better alt-rock albums that have come out in 2019. This is a good time to talk about the albums other most interesting track Coincide with leads off with a distorted guitar lick that puts the rest of the guitar work across this project to shame. While the songwriting is a bit formulaic this is one of the best performed tracks here and definitely the most energetic. 

Encore is a track that forgoes the forgettable to dive into the straight up bad. The vocals are very rough particularly on the hook and it isn't helped by flat songwriting that makes the entire song sound like one long trudge through an instrumental written by a first time middle school rock band. Basically is right back to the good old boring, very much a dated track I can't like that some of the 2000's-esque guitar work is pretty nostalgic and can be catchy at points, but not really enough to save this track. 

Finally the closing track Overlap tries pretty hard to be interesting with the barely above a whisper vocals and super drowned out instrumentals, but then gets right back into the old formula. This song isn't quite as bad of an offender as others as it's constant changing pace keeps it interesting but given that this is in fact a rock album, I was hoping for a little bit more biting conclusion.

The third Catfish And The Bottlemen record may have spoken very strong words about the bands staying power, or lack thereof. Given that far less people are excited for it than either of the last two and that it flips between dreadfully boring and just decent is a shining example of why the band may have already lost its luster. There are some shining moments here that model the kinds of tracks I wish the band would make but at large The Balance doesn't thrill me when it's on and doesn't get me excited for what the band will do next. 5/10

Best Track: Conversation

For more alt-rock check out my review of Cage The Elephant's Social Cues here.