Catfish and the Bottlemen, The Balance, Album Review


Catfish and the Bottlemen
The Balance
Album Review



The third studio album by Indie-rock band extraordinaire Catfish and the Bottlemen, The Balance was released last Friday, following the last album they released back in 2016; the highly successful The Ride.

And while I do understand their previous album as a success, this serves as the first album from the band that I have taken the time to fully listen to.

A big part of the reasoning behind giving this band the benefit of the doubt was the impressive set of teaser tracks. Starting off with January's "Longshot" and followed by "2all" in March. While I don't know if this is just the band's shtick, I enjoyed how these tracks and the album to follow seemed to have much of an essence of The Strokes' "Reptillia". A lot of this albums tracks just has such an infectiously earthy tone to them.

I also feel like this album was released at almost the perfect time. With the summer soon approaching, this album almost feels like a portable festival in a matter of speaking. It has that incredibly warm and feel good charm to it that will definitely make for some radical summer listens.

Another thing I picked up on which I think this album excels in is the abundance of rhythm switches in many of the songs. The band really do like to mix things up on this record and ultimately creates an experience with lasting novelty.

There are a selection of tracks that did stand out to me upon the first full listen. And while I'm yet to decide on a clear favourite track, I think "Sidetrack", "Basically" and "Overlap" all stand as strong contenders.

This album really did take me by surprise for all the right reasons. And by the looks of it, seems like an album that is only going to carry on growing on me (especially with the warm months and festival season marching from the horizon).


Thank you for reading.

Booth Boy

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