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Catfish Seminar’s “Park Bench” makes a case for being one of 2022’s most affecting singles. The Nashville by way of Illinois farmlands band has seized upon an elastic form of Americana as the vehicle of choice for communicating with audiences. Pure and unadulterated balladry is the style of the moment with “Park Bench” and Andi Jane’s elegant yet conversational lyrics about thwarted love are pained and pointed.
Her voice and those words captivate you from the first. She weaves her way through the song’s lyrics patiently matching the pace of her phrasing against her piano playing. The secondary instruments in this track lean towards a classic country configuration, but there’s nothing especially cornpone about the presentation. Instead, “Park Bench” has an underlying singer/songwriter aesthetic and a top-shelf country ballad production that, in the end, defies easy labels beyond the simplest – it’s a great song.
The Catfish Seminar that listeners encounter on the single isn’t the same band that listeners encounter live. Jane’s chief creative partner, songwriter and guitarist Craig Anderson designed the sets for the song’s promotional video and stars in the clip along with Jane, but he’s nowhere to be found in the single. She’s ably assisted by a cast of first rate musicians for the recording – among them, Will McFarlane’s guitar, Paul Neihaus’ pedal steel, and Steven Lewis’ banjo are the song’s brightest lights.
Relatability is the name of the game with the songwriting and the unvarnished language communicates a situation many listeners will know all too well. It’s a relationship locked in terminal velocity depicted in the lyrics, but at that melancholy place before any end of the line fireworks commence. Jane embodies regret, dismissiveness, heartache, and resentment within the same condensed frame and takes no shortcuts getting there.
Some purists may dismiss the song because of its pop song trappings. Honest ears, however, will hear a track that isn’t hidebound to any particular style. The single, instead, exists in its own world where such distinctions are irrelevant. Jane’s vocal delivers the song’s situation without any ham-fisted theatrics, no sense of overkill, and the sure sense of a veteran performer who knows exactly what the track demands.
The accompanying video benefits from the same balance. Catfish Seminar fills the clip with the same class and distinction pervading the track and the stylistic flourish it displays along the edges, never leaning in for melodrama when they can allow the song and the moment to explain itself. There’s a definite closing time, the party’s long over feel to the video without it ever announcing that in an overwrought way.
Catfish Seminar’s diversity and songwriting merits are building the sort of catalog that lasts decades. “Park Bench” is the sort of posterity-minded songwriting we don’t get enough of these days and it’s no stretch to say that the single ranks among the band’s best works so far. There is more coming, however, and it will undoubtedly further solidify their place as one of the pre-eminent Americana themed acts working today.
Jennifer Munoz
