I Need Another Year Alone

"7", the second single released and first track on Catfish and the Bottlemen's second album The Ride, first struck me as a catchy song without incredibly deep lyrics. Many Catfish songs, especially ones off of their first album The Balcony are very intricately phrased and often are written about heavier topics despite an upbeat tune.

The song begins;

Larry, call a load of smoke in
I wanna lose a couple days

Larry is a friend of the band, as well as their guitar technician. Aside from the more obvious meaning this line holds about smoking, I also thought it could be referring to the smoke onstage during their live shows. Calling a load of smoke in would signify the beginning of a show or a string of shows, causing them to lose a couple days from their lives outside of the band. In later lines, the song goes on specifically to talk about a relationship one of the members had.

More repeated lines throughout the song that stuck out to me as multidimensional were;

Promise again that I would call her
Forget the time 'cause I'm seven hours behind
It's probably good I didn't call though
But I always want to 

Here, the most obvious argument would be that because of touring and time differences those in the relationship are literally seven hours apart from each other. I also think this could mean that one person in the relationship is farther ahead and ready to move more quickly than the other, which would also tie in with some other lines in the song, particularly;

And I'd beg you
But you know I'm never home
And I love you but I need another year alone
And I've tried to
Ignore it every time you phone
But I never come close

This stanza is repeated towards the end of the song, but instead of "I need another year alone," the line goes, "And I love you but I need another second to myself." I thought these lines were multidimensional because they can fit in with both arguments about the couple's relationship, but it could also tie back to the band's relationship with the fans and their music as well. Catfish and the Bottlemen have recently become more well known and have begun touring more, which would make their lives much busier. Overall, after listening to "7" a few times, I began to see that there was more to what being said through the lyrics than I first noticed, which is why I chose to defend it as poetry.