When Catfish And The Bottlemen headlined Reading Festival in 2021, they felt like a band rapidly running out of steam. What should have been the biggest moment in their career came under the cloud of break-up rumours, with their frosty performance doing little to quell the speculation. By the end of the year, half of The Bottlemen had quit, and the others had gone silent as one of the biggest indie bands in the country fizzled out.
But now those remaining members (vocalist Van McCann and bassist Benji Blakeway) are back to make amends. With stadiums booked for next summer, there’s clearly ambition behind this renewed Catfish And The Bottlemen but you wouldn’t know it from watching their Sunday night headline set at Reading.
Just like last time, the show starts with the hammering ‘Longshot’ and the rumbling ‘Kathleen’ before technical difficulties threaten to derail their return. With just the microphones working, Van leads the field in a boisterous campfire singalong for ‘Cocoon’ before getting back to their rowdy rock & roll.
Down the front, the crowd screams every word to this greatest hits set and clamber on shoulders to get a better view of the action but outside of the diehards, the audience feels a little restless. A one-two closer of radio-friendly anthems ‘7’ and a fully electric ‘Cocoon’ finally creates the sort of boisterous communal magic you’d expect from a festival headline set but beyond that, their 75-minute set rarely feels exciting.
What makes it worse is that Reading Festival should be an easy win for Catfish And The Bottlemen. They’ve got something to prove after the disaster that was their first time around, while their music is driven by pure coming-of-age fire. It’s a little angsty, a little heartbroken but defiantly rebellious at the same time, as scream-a-long choruses of hope and frustration are delivered between wailing guitar-driven breakdowns. Even the ever-swelling crowd waiting on a potential Oasis reunion should be lapping this up, but it just doesn’t crossover. The whole thing just lacks a bit of fire.
For all his swagger, Van does little to engage the crowd while the production starts and ends with some lights. After all this time away, it still feels like Catfish And The Bottlemen are missing the excitement to make them anything more than fine. Maybe it’ll feel different playing in front of a home crowd at stadiums new summer but it’s hard to feel inspired about a new era of Catfish watching their Reading headline set. Following on from Fred Again..’s euphoric Saturday night headline set and coming just ahead of Liam Gallagher’s celebratory run through of ‘Definitely Maybe’, being good really isn’t good enough.
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