Catfish and the Bottlemen rocks Manhattan
By Christopher Williams
I am a fanatic when it comes to the British indie-rock scene. As the son of an English father, I grew up listening to the likes of The Beatles, The Who, Duran Duran, The Jam, and Joy Division which shaped my music taste into what is is today. The posters that fill the walls of my dorm and the songs that compose my Spotify playlists all feature the same bands: The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Catfish and the Bottlemen, Inhaler, etc. It’s rare that these bands ever tour the United States, but when they do I make sure to capitalize on every opportunity.
Catfish and the Bottlemen announced an American leg of their world tour starting on Sept. 24 in Raleigh, N.C. over the summer for the release of their latest album “The Balance.” I had missed the indie rockers from Wales twice since beginning college at Emerson last September, so I made it a priority to attend a show during this tour no matter where they were playing. Third time’s a charm, right?
The closest location to Boston that the band was scheduled to play was the famed Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on Thursday, Sept. 26. While scrolling through Ticketmaster on my way to see Queen and Adam Lambert in Philadelphia this summer, I impulsively bought two tickets for my father and I, along with a bus ticket for myself from South Station to Port Authority for that Thursday in Manhattan.
After a month of waiting and a prolonged six-hour bus ride courtesy of Manhattan rush-hour traffic, I found myself less than twenty feet from the stage surrounded by a nearly sold-out crowd of two thousand people – the majority appearing to be college-aged kids, like myself, dressed in the band’s black and white merchandise.
Canadian alternative-rock group July Talk opened the show at 8 o’clock and played a half-hour long set featuring seven songs from their albums “July Talk” and “Touch.” Although the majority of the crowd seemed to be unfamiliar with their work, the chemistry and sexual tension between singers Peter Dreimanis and Leah Fay got the audience into it, accompanied by a performance filled with loud, crunchy guitar riffs and an uncomfortable amount of spitting.
Following July Talk’s performance and a 30-minute wait to prepare the equipment, the concert hall turned pitch black and a stripped-back version of The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” played through the speakers. On Paul McCartney’s final “Yeah!” of the song, red strobe lights flashed across the stage and out walked frontman and rhythm guitarist Van McCann, bassist Benji Blakeway, drummer Bob Hull, and lead guitarist Johnny “Bondy” Bond to an uproar of cheers and applause from the Manhattan crowd.
Catfish and the Bottlemen wasted no time to start to show, immediately opening their set with “Longshot,” the first single off of “The Balance.” The reaction from the crowd was nothing less than extraordinary with hundreds of people jumping up and down and deafeningly shouting McCann’s lyrics back at him as he sang.
In total the band played a 17-song set consisting of six songs from debut album “The Balcony,” six songs from sophomore album ‘The Ride,” and five songs from “The Balance,” which was released this April.
McCann provided nothing but nonstop energy from the get-go, running around the stage with the microphone stand and black Fender Telecaster in hand to perform to different parts of the audience while whipping his long blond hair back and forth to the blissful tones he and his band were creating.
One of the loudest reactions from the audience came when the Welsh rockers began to play “Kathleen,” one of the band’s most revered and popular tunes, as their third song of the night. Being one of my favorite Catfish and the Bottlemen songs, I completely lost myself in the moment and just let my body do whatever it wanted to as I belted out every word. Upon rewatching the footage that I recorded on my phone, I do not think that McCann is in frame for more than a second at a time, but it serves as a reminder that I had the time of my life that night.
Fan-favorites “7” and “Cocoon” were saved as the second and third to last performances of the night. As McCann uttered “Larry, call a load of smoke in” to begin “7,” a mosh pit formed to right and continued through the end of the show. Everyone knew that it would soon be coming to a close, and they simply let their emotions take over for the little time remaining.
“Cocoon” was undoubtedly the highlight of the night. Everything about the performance was what I had dreamed of from watching countless hours of Catfish and the Bottlemen festival footage on YouTube: hundreds of people on their feet jumping and screaming, arms flailing everywhere, people crowd surfing and sitting on others’ shoulders, getting showered in whatever drinks were being thrown in the air, and feeling as if there was nothing else in the world that mattered. For the four minutes that the song went on for, I wholeheartedly reciprocated every emotion in McCann’s words back to him when he sang “I’d rather go blind than let you down” in the chorus. It will forever stand as one of my favorite concert moments of all time.
As per usual, an extended version of “Tyrants” brought a night full of euphoria and nonstop rock and roll to an end, and the guys from Catfish and the Bottlemen walked off the stage at Hammerstein Ballroom as if they had just conquered the world.
Time began to tick normally again as the house lights came back on, and it was time to make the three-hour trek back to Boston. What had felt like ten hours spent in the presence of one of my favorite bands only turned out to be just shy of three, but it is, without a doubt, three hours of my life that I will never forget.
The indie rockers’ performance embodied everything that a rock and roll concert is about: deafening guitars, catchy lead lines and choruses, love, passion, raw emotion, and losing yourself in the moment. As long as bands like Catfish and the Bottlemen are around and perform like this on a nightly basis, rock and roll will certainly never go out of style.