Catfish & The Bottlemen share comeback single ‘Showtime’ and announce more UK headline shows

Catfish & The Bottlemen have shared their comeback single ‘Showtime’ and have announced new UK headlining dates.

‘Showtime’ marks Van McCann and co’s first new music in five years, following their last full-length effort, 2019’s ‘The Balance‘. Written and recorded by McCann alongside multi-Grammy-winning producer Dave Sardy (Oasis, LCD Soundsystem, The Rolling Stones), the track sees the frontman sing about their return to music.

“Get on this/ Sometimes when the thing you love is right in front of your eyes / Don’t blink or you’ll miss/ Showtime/ Before you know it’s going gone and that’s life,” sings McCann in the chorus of the anthemic track along a booming medley of percussion and jangly guitars. Check out the song and its full lyrics below.

‘Showtime’ is the first song to be released from Catfish & the Bottlemen’s soon to be announced fourth studio album.

The band previously teased their first new music in five years this past weekend (February 17) by posting a six-second snippet of the track on their social media channels. The band also released a pre-order of ‘Showtime’ on a white 7″ vinyl pressing along with new merchandise.

Along with the release of the track, Catfish & The Bottlemen are also set to embark on a handful of live dates in the UK this summer. Announced exactly 900 days since the band last played in front of a live crowd, they will perform a headline show at Cardiff Castle on July 19, and Edinburgh Summer Sessions on August 24.

Ticket pre-sale for the gigs will be available for fans who sign up to the band’s official mailing list and is set to commence on Tuesday, February 27 at 10am local time. General ticket sale will commence on Friday, March 1 at 10am local time. Buy tickets here.

The newly announced shows will occur days before their headlining set Reading and Leeds this year, where they will be performing on the Friday at Leeds and the Sunday at Reading.

The band have not played a show together since 2021, following their headline slots at Reading & Leeds and a pair of outdoor gigs at Singleton Park in Swansea and Neighbourhood Weekender in Warrington. By that time, rumours of the group splitting up had already been swirling.

In a three-star review of their 2021 Reading Festival headlining performance, NME shared: “’One of our longshots paid off,’ sings frontman Van McCann on opener ‘Longshot’ from 2019’s ‘The Balance’ – a heartening notion for most bands who dream of headlining the hallowed stage of Reading. As he later pines on 2016’s ‘Soundcheck’ from ‘The Ride’: ‘Because you grew up in a small town / You’ll appreciate it more’.”

“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 fuck; a well-oiled machine of indie proficiency. Their songs are at times invigorating, rushing through a checklist of stadium rock crowd-pleasing tick boxes.”

The upcoming live shows Catfish and the Bottlemen are expected to announce will be their first since the departure of guitarist Johnny “Bondy” Bond.

In 2022, Bond confirmed he had left the band the year before, 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”.

“To put it simply, I feel that both the professional and personal relationships had become entirely dysfunctional,” he added in his statement. Bondy went on to explain that he played four summer shows with the band last year as a session musician “as there was nobody else ready to do so”.

“I have had no contact or affiliation of any sort with the remaining band members since then (Neighbourhood Festival ’21),” he wrote. He added that he “assumed” the group would have informed fans about his departure as well as drummer Bob Hall’s, but that “as far as I’m aware this has not happened yet”.