“I feel like everybody started thinking too outside the box, trying to be arty and different. We wanted to stay inside the box.” With that premise in mind, Welsh indie-rockers Catfish and the Bottlemen headhunted producer Dave Sardy for this, the follow-up to 2014’s middling debut The Balcony. Sardy has previous with British powerhouses Oasis and Primal Scream, as well as nearly men like Twisted Wheel and Reverend and the Makers, so it’s no surprise that Catfish have delivered on that explicitly ‘non-arty’ brief.
And therein lies the problem: anyone beyond their teenage years will have already witnessed the corpse of British indie-rock being resurrected, murdered and resurrected again a thousand times. While the honesty of likeable frontman Van McCann is to be admired, there’s little substance to latch onto here, apart from overblown choruses and unripened lyrics (“From every hangover my head feels/ To every ex I didn’t treat right/ To every Monday I called in sick/ To every argument I let slide”).
There are good things on The Ride. ‘Glasgow’, a sweet love letter to a booze-fuelled Scottish romance, and ‘Oxygen’, a mid-paced slow-burner with a rousing guitar solo, prove that when they pare back on the indie bombast, Catfish are capable of delivering real gems.
Rating 5/10