Credit: Jill FurmanovskyCatfish and the Bottlemen earned the first number-one album of their career with The Ride. The British band's sophomore effort debuted at number-one in the U.K., which gave them, as frontman Van McCann says, an "unexplainable feeling."
"We've always believed in the band and the songs and all that stuff, but we never try and write a hit album or hit songs," McCann tells ABC Radio.
Despite that, Catfish have written both hit albums and hit songs, in the U.K. and the U.S. The lead single from The Ride, "Soundcheck," currently sits in the top 15 on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart. If you're a fan of "Soundcheck," chances are you'll like Catfish's other songs, as the single is a good reflection of McCann's songwriting style.
"I always write directly for the person in front of me," McCann explains. "Whoever I'm writing about...whether it's the lads beside me or myself, I always write about something or someone. And I never try to be poetic or disguise anything lyrically. I just say what I'm thinking, 'say what I mean, mean what I say' kind of vibe."
Catfish and the Bottlemen will be playing some of the biggest venues of their career in the U.S. on a tour this fall, but even with their success so far, the band still feels like they did when they first started.
"We're used to putting CDs on people's windscreens back in the day before we got signed," says McCann. "We used to make hundreds of CDs, and if we got stuck in traffic, we get out of the car and put one down every car, and we'd have 20 cars playing the song sometimes. So we're still very much in that 'trying to get somewhere' kind of phase, we're not settled in really yet with it."
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