The Singles Jukebox

Please, no encore…

[Video][Website]
[3.73]

Will Adams: iTunes used to offer promo codes that gave you free downloads of 50-song playlists consisting of singles from several indie rock bands, often organized via festival lineups or somesuch. I’d snag cuts from the likes of Delta Spirit, Local Natives, and Deerhunter, and being the dance and pop kid, these freebies were my only outlet to discover indie rock. The offerings were all enjoyable songs with surfing guitar lines and shouty vocals that I could get along with. “Soundcheck” sounds like it could have come with those promo packages, the kind of song that fits multi-movement structure into four minutes while retaining a sense of grandeur, the kind of song that begins with chugging uptempo and then swerves into a sprawling arrangement. It’s something to revisit, perhaps for background music at small parties or family dinners, that reminds me of a long lost outlet for me to discover music I would have never considered otherwise.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: Catfish and his Bottlemen continue to plumb rock ‘n’ roll of yesteryear in an effort to… well, sound somewhere between Foo Fighters and a thrift store Strokes. Which would be fine if the end result was anywhere approaching the heights of either band, but a large chunk of “Soundcheck” is some arena swagger that goes nowhere. 
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: If “Best Breakthrough” were taken to refer to a Gary Sparrow-like burst out of some back-alley time portal to 2007, Catfish and the Bottlemen would deserve every bit of their recent Brit Award. It would explain a lot, and were it that it did. There’s “meat-and-potatoes” rock, and then there’s just potatoes; boiled potatoes, eaten dry. Stodgy and meandering but for one tiny bit of key-change colour at the end — there’s nothing inherently wrong with the sound, it’s just that they do nothing with it.
[4]

Cassy Gress: I hit play and I heard Blink-182, in the olden days before Tom deLonge decided he was a Serious Musician. A little longer into the song, and it doesn’t really sound like Blink-182, it sounds like Tom deLonge’s haircut. It’s not required for singers to sound invested, I guess, but Van McCann sounds a bit self-conscious. You can hear it in the way that his voice trails off at the end of phrases — or maybe that’s just an affectation, like he’s trying to sound all “nah babe.”  Goodness, that mellotron (?) leading into the bridge is oddly boring — it’s like they couldn’t think of a good transition between chorus and bridge so “JUST PLAY A B FOR 8 BARS, IT’LL BE FINE.”
[3]

Iain Mew: Previous encounters with this lot have left nary a dent in my memory, so I came into this fairly expectation free. The bits that are like Tokyo Police Club’s terse take on garage rock are quite effective, but the band seems too keen on transmitting a snarl to commit to being tight enough, even before they go off into overblown solos. The lightly sketched lyrics, working up the focus on just the other person’s background, come off as vaguely condescending.
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner underwhelms as a lyricist, in spite of his lofty reputation as a storyteller, but he still conjures up a handful of striking images for each album. The Catfish and the Bottlemen single “Soundcheck” is, like Turner’s work, concerned with minor moments, but without the imaginative detail. “You can fall asleep with my jacket as a cover,” promises Van McCann, “and wake up just to join me to smoke.” This is on the heels of “I raced through soundtrack just to meet you on your fag break.” Cigarettes aren’t that interesting!
[4]

Alfred Soto: Last time out they praised a Kathleen. Now they praise a woman who falls asleep in the lead singer’s jacket, anestheticized by the chord progressions. But please wake up, Kathleen: if you think the organ’s sinister, listen to the lead singer and his mates talk about your background, about your growing up in a small town. Kick their nuts.
[1]

Brad Shoup: Some nice harmonic meshing between Catfish and the bottom end. The guitars don’t mesh in the same way, but it’s a decent lashing anyway. Mostly, though, it’s a chorus searching for a justification.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: In the future, we will all sound like the bands who were so eager to get their video on MTV2 and get reviewed in SPIN, only to be forgotten about besides when we come on that “alternative” playlist in Applebees next to Hot Hot Heat and Jet’s Oasis ballad.
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: I wouldn’t have nearly so much antipathy for this song if Mr. Catfish wasn’t trying so hard to sound like Julian Casablancas. The rest of it is whatever — if rock is doomed to be a series of ever-younger wraiths repeating the same series of ever-more-circumscribed gestures into eternity, I can’t say it doesn’t deserve it — but dude, you’re trying to be a star, at least use your own throat.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Van McCann sings like both the catfish and the bottles are lodged down his throat.
[3]