Page 12 - ION Indie Magazine JanFeb 2018

PL: But other songs of mine, like ‘Heart of Strangers,’ pretty much came out fully formed. And for me, that was a
written lyric first. I had just got on a train to London, by the time I got to London it was all written. The melody
and the chord structure were a lot harder. So, it varies. It will be interesting on the next album to co-write a bit
more. Sometimes it seems you can tell which are my songs and which are Matt's songs. It might be interesting
to try and meld the two.

ML: Whichever ones that have extended guitar solos tend to be mine.

Adam Pyke: ‘Big Shot’ still surprised me when I found it was one of your songs because I think of that as a very
riffy song. More stuff like that would be super cool…the combination of the two vibes.

ML: And it's completely different from how it is now. It's like more of a proper reggae sort of thing. Obviously,
we’re not much of a reggae band, so we had to sort of change it to put it in our own style. So that was pretty
much a co-write aside from the fact that he'd already written the song beforehand. I would love to do some
actual co-writes in the next album, rather than just having me singing/him singing, sort of thing.

PL: I quite like the two singers, actually. Not many bands have two people who sing. There are many examples
actually -- ABBA, Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp, 10cc. It is slightly unusual that you have two people who are
singing lead vocals. And it's good to have a rest.

ION: Sharing the vocal duties, how do you decide who's going to take the lead vocals?

ML: I always find that when someone sings a song that they haven't written, a lot of the time they don't really
connect with it. Sometimes you can do it -- like cover a song and you take it your own way and perceive it how
you want to perceive it. A lot of the covers that we do, I will sing my perspective on it. Most of the time I happen
to sing my stuff because it's about personal things.

PL: We're doing fewer covers now than we used to, but one we've been doing recently is ‘Breaking Up
Somebody's Home’ by Albert King. And when we started rehearsing that, I was going to sing that. Then after the
first rehearsal, it became obvious that it was more suited to him (Matthew).

KY: I think a lot of the time the numbers that we do depend on how it sits and how it feels. It's all about how
much emotion comes out. You can see that from how the feeling comes out from Matt, and hopefully from the
rest of us in terms of how we express musicality or the pieces that we want to do. Even for the new stuff we
re
record cord, hopefully, that will always be the
way we go. To me, that's the heart of
Catfish. It’s about how we put the heart
and soul into the numbers and how we
portray it to the audience.

PL: And it's got to be about songs. I
mean, I've spent so much of my life
watching bands in the back of the clubs,
watching some really great guitar
players. I don't remember a single song
or a song all night long. So, I know we're
as guilty as charged of long guitar solos,
but I always think there's a song at the
heart of it. Hopefully a good song.

Pictured: Matt Long