By the tail end of 2018, The Sherlocks begged to be allowed back into the studio. In stark contrast to the sessions for their debut album, recorded in late-night sessions at the cut-off, rural Rockfields in Wales, this time they opted to record at Liverpool’s Parr Street Studios with The Coral’s James Skelly at the desk for the four weeks running up to Christmas, knocking off at six o’clock Monday to Friday to head into town for snooker, beer and a debrief on the day’s work. The result was a tighter, brighter, ultra-modern alt-rock record, benefiting from Skelly’s knack for focusing a killer chorus, less indebted to indie rockers of old and smattered with stylistic swerves into new wave, ‘80s textures and all-out feedback freakouts. It’s as Killers, Cars, High Flying Birds and Two Door Cinema Club as it is Catfish. A real 21st Century guitar rock record. “The first album was us four in a room,” Kiaran says. “We wanted to make it really raw like the Arctic Monkeys’ first album or Kings Of Leon’s. We wanted to capture the live sound and polish it up a bit. It was a straight-up rock’n’roll record, there weren’t many tricks going off. With this one we’ve taken it a step further and made it slightly smoother and put more keyboards in. Rather than having the guitars thrashing all the time we’ve tried being a bit sweeter with it. It sounds more contemporary, I can hear it on Radio 1.” And you will too. Meanwhile, Kiaran claims to already have half of album three in the bag, which is already hinting at The Sherlock’s next step towards total rock domination. “It’s quite upbeat” Kiaran says. “A lot of bands get to their third album and take a weird turn, thinking outside of the box. I think I know what a good melody is and we’ll try different things on each record and push ourselves a lot more but I’d never stick some weird production on to try to mask a bad song. We like big anthemic sing-alongs like The Killers would write, so that’s the direction we’re heading in, aiming for stadiums.” Considering how accurate The Sherlocks’ aim has been so far, an elementary deduction.