That Catfish & The Bottlemen have become as popular as they are is actually surprising. For starters, they named their band Catfish & The Bottlemen. They’ve never had the critical press on their side until recently, and that relationship is still a bit tenuous.
That Catfish & The Bottlemen have become as popular as they are is actually surprising. For starters, they named their band Catfish & The Bottlemen. They’ve never had the critical press on their side until recently, and that relationship is still a bit tenuous. They have a sound that is hard to define without using the terms “simple” or “straightforward” in a manner that might come across as negative. Visually, they’re not stylish or flashy, and if given the choice, they’d rather talk about helicopters and Jacuzzis than the sonic direction of their music.
Despite all of this, they’ve been able to amass a large following over the past eight years through their shocking sincerity and unparalleled live repertoire. Their 2014 full-length debut, The Balcony, demonstrated plenty of reasons for the band’s popularity, while also challenging the critical standard. Much like The 1975, they’re a band with a great deal of hype behind them that’s tough to wrap your head around at first glance. But give them the chance, and they’ll show you why the hype actually falls short of relaying their true value.
Catfish & The Bottlemen make their Richmond debut Thursday, March 12th at The Camel, in front of a sold-out crowd that’s been anticipating this concert for months. Before that show, we got a chance to talk to their opinionated and verbose frontman, Van McCann, about his love of lyrics and his experiences dealing with bad press.
Is it true you guys have about two or three more albums written and ready to go?
Yeah, that’s correct. We just got the second one squared up. Everything’s there, it’s just figuring out what we’re going to use. What stuff’s going to get used and what isn’t going to get used. We’re not strapped for material, we take it very serious.
Do you have just a wealth of material, or specific things for the next one and the one after that?
Well, we feel like we’ve got one definite song for the next album that was left off the last one. There’s a load of tunes that were left off the first album that I thought should be on there. Our best mate who’s our guitar tech – we kind of use him as our general public, because he’s not a musician, he’s just a guy who likes music. He always tells us what the single is and what the album tracks are. He’s really good predicting that for us. He picked the track he thought the fans would like, so we’ve got that and maybe three or four others I would definitely put on it. Then, we’ve got a tune that’s ready that we always said would open up the second album. After that and some others, we probably have enough stuff left over for the third.
Is there any timetable with these next albums?
To be honest, we’re not supposed to start writing it until April, but we finished it when we recorded the last album. The timing is all over the place because it was supposed to be next year before we even started thinking about it really, but we just did it because we move so quick and we want to put out another album. We’ve promised fans a lot of things and one thing, apart from that we’d be playing football stadiums, was we promised that we’ll be consistent. Like Oasis was, you know? You invest in us in the early days and you’re going to get a band to believe in. You’re not going to get a band that’s going to go out to LA after the first album, start partying, and forgetting that they’re there to write music for people. It’s not about yourself. We just want the people who invested in us early on to get repaid.
You’ve said you’re a huge fan of the lyrics of a song. What is it about the lyrics of a song for you that speaks to you more than the music?
I just love them in general. I’m not that big of a music fan, to be honest. When I’m at a concert and I watch a band rock out and play guitar solos for seven minutes, it does nothing for me. I don’t get off on musicianship. I just get off on a song when it’s driving and the singer is singing the lyrics that mean something to him and they’re ripping it through their throats, full on screaming. I like that kind of stuff. I’m really simplistic when it comes to music. I like simple, straight up, easy songs. I don’t like guitar shredding and mad drums. I’ve always been a lyric guy.
Being such a big fan of lyrics, what do you think about people having different takes on the same lyric?
I quite like it when people have a different interpretation. For instance, there’s that Supergrass song [“Alright”] with the lyrics “we are young, we are free.” The lyrics in that tune go “we are young, we go out, smoke a fag, put it out.” It’s so simple because that’s all we do. We go out, play gigs, smoke a fag, and get back on the bus. It’s just simple. To me, I thought he meant “we go out, smoke a fag, and put it out” like sexually to have this twist on it. It just blew my mind thinking maybe it is this double meaning. So I like it do stuff like that. For instance, one of my mates thought the song “Homesick” was about me being away from home and family because that’s just what he felt when he was hearing it, but it’s more about being away from a loved one so I kind of like that little double meaning.
Do you try and write double meaning in your songs then?
I always try to write at least one line. Every now and then, I’ll write some one liners and pick the one that could be double meaning. Like the Supergrass song, if you’ve got something that can mean two things, it’s always better. There’s a tune on the new album which I kind of realized is about loving to go out for a drink. Our guitar tech loves going for a beer so that tune can be about someone’s love for beer, but I’ve made it sound like a love song for a girl when it’s actually about a pipe.
Who do you look up to as a songwriter?
The Streets. I love Mike Skinner. Every time, every day, I still listen to him, since I was 14. When I first started writing songs, it was because of him and I just love how straightforward he is. Same with Eels. I love the way E writes lyrics. And The National’s stuff is great too. I just love brutally honest stuff. I like it when people are writing songs about things. I don’t like it when bands come up and sing about all types of things. That bands that have come out of England the past couple years, I don’t know any off the top of my head apart from obviously the Arctic [Monkey]s who are actually singing about a subject. They’re just jamming. The bands are always big and tight, but they don’t have anything to say. They’re not singing about a girl they love or a place they’ve been. Not the rock bands. They’re all just playing heavy music and screaming all kinds of stuff over it so I wanted to be the band that kind of joins that Streets kind of normality. Try to take it to the size of Oasis and make you feel like The Strokes. That kind of consistent, but life affirming and honest songwriting.
So would you say each song to you has an exact story behind it?
Yeah, all of them. They take as long to write as they do to listen to them. That’s how I write so many songs so quick–because I’m writing about real stuff, so I’ve got subject matter that comes straight out. I don’t sit there and try and be poetic. Like the chorus of “Cocoon” is saying, “Fuck it if anybody tries to get to you. Fuck it as long as you’ve got each other, nothing matters. As long as you’re surrounded by the people you love, nothing matters.” Instead of being poetic about it, I just wrote it as “Fuck it, nothing matters.” I just talk really.
The press in England has been particularly harsh to you guys for most of your career, but they’ve recently changed their stance and supported you. Is there any resentment or anger from that?
I don’t mind. I can understand. We’ve all got long hair like Oasis used to and The Beatles used to. When I came out, I was a 14 year old saying I want to take over the world and be the biggest star in the world and buy a helicopter. We’re not just saying what the press wants, so we’ll be honest instead of saying “I write music for myself and if other people get it, that’s great.” I don’t. I write music because I don’t get anything out of a song until I see people singing it. If I don’t think a festival of 60,000 people are going to sing this, I won’t bother with it. I sit in my room hoping 60,000 people will sing this song, not thinking that I like it so other people should get it. I don’t get anything from it. I write for other people and the only thing I get off on is playing gigs and seeing people react to it. We love seeing the reactions and people coming up to us, saying stuff like “I met my girlfriend at your gig and this is our song now.” I love when you wrote something that actually stands somewhere in someone’s life.
All that reaction from NME – I can understand. We were kids coming out saying we want to take over the world and we’re not the usual suspects. Everyone’s got like slicked back hair and we’ve got all long hair that’s scruffy. We’re a proper guitar band that’s been around for seven or eight years, and have played every venue in England. They dismissed us because we weren’t that regurgitated pop machine that you can just pour hype on. If you put us on the front cover of your magazine saying “this is the next big thing” or “this band has come out of nowhere,” everyone would say [they’ve] seen us for years. NME has told us we were shit for seven years and on the eighth year, they told us we were actually all right. We don’t mind it. We save it all up for when we have a smoke and laugh our heads off. One critic said we are nothing. This band is nothing. Not they’re shit or they’re good; he said their songs and everything are just nothing. They don’t exist. We thought that was amazing that they just said we were nothing. We got number one for physical sales in England when the album came out, and that was on a tiny independent record label with no money behind it. Everything was driven on the fact that we were exciting people live.
English press would criticize me for the things I said, but people on their own were going, “This guy’s coming out with drive and ambition. He’s being honest.” I said I want to buy my mom a Jacuzzi and the press thought I was being a dick. Really, I was thinking, “Well, my mom’s never had a Jacuzzi and I’ve never had any money to buy a Jacuzzi so if I could buy one, that’d be amazing to me.” That’s not me being arrogant – that’s just me being a little boy. Filled up with dreams to buy a helicopter if I wanted to, just like Jay-Z. I went to see Jay-Z in New York and that’s what made me think, “Why not want to buy a helicopter?” Jay-Z and Beyoncé left the gig in two helicopters and the thought came up that they played a massive gig for the whole of New York City, probably flew back, had a glass of wine, and then tucked their kid into bed. If I could do that with my wife and my kids and go see my dogs straight after a gig, I would. You know, blow everyone away, have everyone walk away from that gig, like we did, saying that guy is amazing and my mind is blown, and then just get in a helicopter and go home. That’s amazing. You’re that good and you’ve earned enough respect in the music industry and you’ve worked hard enough to get that – why not grab it with both hands?
We’re not afraid of saying that. We’re just young lads trying to become someone in life so when the musical press are criticizing us, we don’t care. We understand. I know some of the people from NME have come to our gigs since and said it changed their views of it. They said we were the new Oasis, pretty much the week after us calling us one of the worst bands in the country. A guy called Dan Stubbs came to see us because they had been writing about us and never saw us live. He came out to see us and he was blown away by it and moved by how normal and sweet we are. I told him, “Mate, don’t worry about the NME stuff. I don’t mind that you gave us bad press. I’m just glad you took a risk to come see us and gave us an opportunity to blow your mind.” We did that night and ever since, NME branded us a genuine grassroots phenomena. They can’t call us this overnight success or the next big thing because we’ve been at it for ages, so now they’ve got an angle.
I just think people were struggling with an angle first because we’re a scruffy group of lads who just play rock and roll. We’ve come out from the start and said we don’t think outside the box, we’re inside the box. When everyone else is outside of the box, using laptops and styling their hair and wearing expensive clothes, we wear dead scruffy clothes and we just sing songs. We say what we mean and we mean what we say. That’s why the people got it and the press didn’t, because we weren’t giving the press anything they wanted. We weren’t giving them this rock star illusion. We’re just kids. We don’t want to be in your magazines. We want to play rock and roll music and sing all around the world for people in venues. We don’t want to be on the telly, but if we can get on there, that’s great and it can be like a dream come true, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about playing live in the venues and trying to blow people away every night.
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Catfish & The Bottlemen are at The Camel this Thursday night for a sold-out show. Richmonders who missed tickets for tonight’s show have a chance to check the band out again in two months at XL102’s Big Field Day on Saturday, May 2nd. For more information on that, click here.
