Catfish And The Bottlemen at Reading Festival 2024: soon-to-be stadium band lay their claim

Eight Heaton Parks and 10 Wembley Stadiums – those are the shows rumoured for Oasis’ mega reunion tour next year. The combined capacity is more than the population of some countries, and yet it still doesn’t seem enough to meet the demand. Catfish And The Bottlemen, meanwhile – who co-headline Reading 2024 tonight ahead of the Liam Gallagher show said to break the news we thought we’d never hear – have more modest yet still wildly ambitious shows on their horizon.

When the Welsh indie stars recently announced plans for their first stadium gigs at Cardiff Principality and the Spurs ground, many took online to express doubt that they had the following and momentum to pull it off and fill ’em up. The last time Catfish topped the bill here was on a run of 2021 shows many believed to be their last. Twitter and tabloids spoke of their demise as the Welsh rock machine seemed to power down before a few years of silence. With no new music and no rise in profile, is a stadium run really the wisest move?

Well, as Jim Morrison said in Wayne’s World 2, “If you book it, they will come”. Do you believe in manifesting the big stuff? Catfish sure bloody do. Their opening song carries that spirit: “One of our longshots paid off”.

The band didn’t split the other year, but now frontman Van McCann and bassist Benji Blakeway are the only remaining full-time members after others fell away due to “entirely dysfunctional” relationships. What we’re left with here is a lean, mean, rock machine. Indie disco staple ‘Kathleen’ feels like it might lift the rammed front sections of Reading off the ground before sound issues force a halt. Even then, McCann, in his element, tries to gee up the crowd in full house party mode before a brief interlude. He bursts back on straight into the line “You’re simpaticooooo”, as if nothing had happened. Nothing is gonna get in their way tonight.

Inflatable crocodiles are dispersed for ‘Soundcheck’ as McCann flails and wails like Cobain, before ‘Pacifier’ gets the masses up on one another’s shoulders for the first of many times this evening. Here, as on ‘Taste’, there’s a snarling indie sensibility met with chest-beating arena bravado – as if The Cribs shed their punk edge, beefed up on riffs and adopted the The Killers‘s knack to rattle the eyeballs of the fans at the back. It’s indie sleaze turned up to 11.

They see where they’re headed. There’s a cheeky, brief nod to their stadium-dwelling countrymen Stereophonics with a snippet of ‘The Bartender And The Thief’, while the spotlight and theatrics of ‘2all’ show they’ve got the moves for the big spaces. The widescreen psych wig-out and breakdown of ‘Outside’ even has a smack of Pink Floyd to it. They’re playing with a damn sight more compulsion than last time, and they certainly know what an enormodome band should look, sound and feel like. The crowd before us lap it up. Will they multiply to fill those spaces? Maybe the long shot will pay off.

Catfish & The Bottlemen’s Reading 2024 setlist was:

‘Longshot’
‘Kathleen’
‘Soundcheck’
‘Pacifier’
‘Twice’
‘Fallout’ (with snippet of Stereophonics’ ‘Bartender and the Thief’)
‘2all’
‘Homesick’
‘Rango’
‘Outside’
‘Fluctuate’
‘7’
‘Cocoon’

Follow all of the action as it happens on the NME Reading & Leeds liveblog here.

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