Catfish & The Bottlemen have made their comeback with the release of their new single ‘Showtime’ and have revealed plans for a series of headlining UK shows. The single, which was written and recorded by frontman Van McCann alongside producer Dave Sardy, marks the band’s first release in five years. The anthemic track sees the frontman sing about their return to music with lyrics like “sometimes when the thing you love is right in front of your eyes / Don’t blink or you’ll miss/ Showtime.”
‘Showtime’ is the first track from Catfish & The Bottlemen’s forthcoming fourth studio album. The band previously teased the song with a six-second snippet on social media over the past weekend. The band has also released a pre-order of ‘Showtime’ on a white 7″ vinyl pressing along with new merchandise.
Along with the release of ‘Showtime’, Catfish & The Bottlemen has announced a handful of live dates in the UK this summer, which will occur before their headlining set at Reading and Leeds festivals. Fans can expect McCann and co at Cardiff Castle on July 19, and Edinburgh Summer Sessions on August 24. Ticket pre-sale for the gigs will be available to fans who sign up to the group’s official mailing list on Tuesday, February 27. The general ticket sale will commence on Friday, March 1.
The new shows will be the band’s first since the departure of guitarist Johnny “Bondy” Bond. “I feel that both the professional and personal relationships had become entirely dysfunctional,” Bond said in a statement in 2022. Bondy confirmed he had left the band the year before, widely alleging that changes in the line-up and the uncertainty about the band’s future had stemmed from “behaviour constantly re-occurring that I found to be intolerable.” He played four summer shows with the band last year as a session musician “as there was nobody else ready to do so.”
“Circle pits swirl and the vast crowd grows a little more feral, and it’s easy to see how Catfish became one of Britain’s biggest guitar bands. They’re slick as f**k; a well-oiled machine of indie proficiency. Their songs are at times invigorating, rushing through a checklist of stadium rock crowd-pleasing tick boxes,” said NME in a review of their 2021 Reading Festival headlining performance
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