Background Info

Catfish and the Bottlemen, formerly known as "The Prestige", were founded in April 2007, when Ryan Evan "Van" McCann and Billy Bibby began playing guitar together at Billy's parents home, a bed & breakfast in Llandudno, Wales.Van's parents also ran a bed and breakfast in town and Van was friends with Billy's younger brother, which is how Van and Billy met. Van and Billy were joined by Benjamin Blakeway on bass as the third founding member of the band. Schoolmate Jon Barr followed shortly thereafter on drums. Billy Bibby, who had been playing guitar since age 10, taught both Van McCann and Benji Blakeway how to play. They promoted themselves by playing in car parks after other artist's gigs, including bands such as Kasabian. Steve Lamacq first played an early demo on BBC Radio 6 Music in March 2009.During 2009, Catfish came runners up in the 'North Wales Battle of the Bands' having been beaten to the post by another local band The Fides who later closed the Conwy River Festival. Original drummer Jon Barr was replaced by Robert "Bob" Hall in 2010. Bob Hall was introduced to the band by a North Wales-based producer who was working with the band at the time.

The band derives its name from McCann's first childhood musical memory: that of an Australian street busker in Sydney, playing beer bottles strung to a wire who goes by the name Catfish the Bottleman. He was called "Catfish" because of an unusually styled spiky beard he had when he first began playing in 2000.McCann was reunited with Catfish the Bottleman in January 2015 at the studios of Triple J radio in Sydney.

Main Image

The main image consists of a black background with what seems like a white digital drawing in the centre. The drawing is of two people with their hands down each other's trousers. The band name is in the top left corner and is also in white. Apart from that there is nothing else on the album cover and is pretty plain and minimalistic. Both the drawing and the font is in white which contrasts nicely with the black background. The actual drawing itself is of a guy and a girl who have their hands down eachother's trousers and has sexual connotations which relates to the genre of indie as being eccentric

Title

The title is in the top left corner of the front cover and is in different fonts and sizes. 'Catfish' is big and spaced out, 'and the' is small, 'bottlemen' is big and bold and 'the balcony' is small. They are all positioned in a square composition and is all concise.

Layout
The digital drawing is positioned in the centre and the ratio of background is higher to the drawing. The title is positioned in the top left corner which is unusual but draws more attention to the drawing which is a key part of the band's marketing. On the CD however the same digital drawing is across the entire CD and the band's name is not on there. On the back cover, the track list is really small and almost indecipherable

Font

Font of the title varies in size, width and spacing and each sentence is in line with each other.  The font folows a similair style on the back, it is really small and has a central composition. The ratio of background to text is imbalanced, there being more background to text. The font is white which contrasts really well with the black background and matches the drawing.

Colour Scheme

The colour scheme is very simple only consisting of two main colours which is black and white. These colours contrast well, and the white drawing stands out more. The connotations of the colours black and white relate to mystery and white relates to spirituality, which are two very strong links to my genre of indie.