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Apr 29, 2025 Web Exclusive By Michael James Hall

“Have you heard The Tubs yet? They’re from Cardiff. They’re your new favorite band.” So went the message I woke up to from a trusted friend one hazy morning last August. Welsh and intrigued, I listened to their 2023 single “Wretched Lie.” I moved on to their 2020 single “I Don’t Know How It Works” and then I ordered their debut album Dead Meat and The Names EP on vinyl and started looking for Tubs t-shirts. Sometimes, it’s just that easy to fall in love.

Seeing the band live, first at Green Man Festival then at End of the Road ’24, was a further revelation. They were incendiary, genuinely funny, and exciting. They weren’t just my new favorite band, they were all of my favorite bands playing at once. I turned to said trusted friend at the former show and gave ‘em a big ol’ bear hug. Thanks for the gift.

Part of the South East London-based Gob Nation collective, The Tubs sprang from the remains of beloved indie-punks Joanna Gruesome, and have common members with the magnificent Ex-Void (whose recent album In Love Again is essential), as well as the furious, frantic Sniffany & The Nits. It’s hard to unpick exactly how many great bands Tubs singer/guitarist Owen “O” Williams is involved in, but it’s with The Tubs, it seems, his most personal and powerful work gets done.

Cotton Crown is a simple album. Stylistically, it pushes no boundaries; sonically, the band play it strong and straightforward. What could be viewed as a flaw is, in truth, an asset. In sticking tight to tradition they’re able to focus sharply on instantly memorable melodies, laughably great guitar hooks (courtesy of George Nicholls, who has since left the band) and Williams’ blackly humorous lyrics. They combine this simplicity with admirable brevity. The album clocks in at only nine tracks in 29 minutes, and there’s not a single extraneous second, not a moment wasted—this is jangle pop delivered directly, undiluted, into the veins.

On the astounding “Chain Reaction” they share the ferocity and tunefulness of peak Hűsker Dű, albeit replete with bar-room piano and dismaying lyrics like “I’m the mould on the bathroom floor / The creeping dread, the balance limit.”

Then there’s the Evan Dando summer-strum of opener “The Thing Is”—its sweetness offset by Williams’ lyrical specificity and self-effacement: “Left you in Catford ‘Spoons and you were all alone / You said you never met someone you hate like me.” (For non-UK readers, the Catford branch of the Wetherspoons pub chain is not somewhere you want to be left “all alone” in my lived experience).

How about a splash of The Replacements in the pub-punk of “Embarrassing?” In flashes you might just make out the sunlight stripe of The Go-Betweens. There are even moments tinged by Grand Prix-era Teenage Fanclub, often those colored by the swooning harmonies of Williams’ Ex-Void bandmate Lan McCardle.

Frankly, though, the band most often sound like Richard Thompson fronting The Smiths (would watch) as on the dizzying, gorgeous “Narcissist.” Our numb narrator demands “Jane said you’re a narcissist, well I wanna see / You should do it to me, you should do it to me,” smartly marrying the masochistic to the sublimely melodic. The chorus opens with the direct, eminently relatable sentiment: “Sick of the vibes in my room.”

It’s the Thompson comparison that stands up to most scrutiny—Williams not only seems to share a set of vocal chords with the folk legend, as ready to spit as to serenade, but also writes songs with the same sense of emotional scale, the same infectious, sly energy. They share shifts in chords and tricks of melody that are undeniable, almost elemental.

For all the easy and admittedly satisfying comparison points, Cotton Crown somehow never sounds like homage, and always more than a sum of its influences. The Tubs come across like a band who just happen to sound like this, rather than a band desperately aping their forebears.

It doesn’t harm that every tune is towering. From the yearning, vaulting “Freak Mode” (“I’m not myself / Haven’t been him for years”) to the fucked-up folk punk of “Illusion” the songs absolutely leap with life, while drummer Taylor Stewart and bassist Max Warren lock symbiotically to create an unshakeable backdrop for Williams’ taut vocal expression and Nicholls’ glorious guitar flamboyance.

It’s been acknowledged by the band that the album deals with the aftermath of Williams’ mother’s suicide, indeed the cover image is of her breastfeeding him at just a few months old against the backdrop of a cemetery. I mean, fucking hell. While much of the album deals with Williams’ inability to form healthy relationships in light of that loss, it’s album closer “Strange” that handles the matter head-on and with a level of honesty that may well have you shuddering: “When I found out the method / From an article in Wales Online / A picture of my mother in a weird hat / Under an overcast sky / Successful music journalist, mother of two / Takes her own life.”

It’s a beautiful song, moving, crushing, and supremely melodious. It’s emblematic of how a truly great band can take something as heavy and all-encompassing as grief and alchemically turn it into perfect pop music.

What’s hard to quantify about Cotton Crown, for all its many splendors, is how deep under the skin these songs get. These are tunes that will spin in your head for months, drawing you back for endless, repeated listens. I find myself returning to tracks like “Narcissist” and “Chain Reaction” over and over again, childishly wondering “How do you do this? How can this band be this good?” Maybe thinking that through repetition I’ll understand how it’s done, how something so simple can make you feel so much.

Cotton Crown is a truly rare record. Poetic, poisonous, exhilarating, and somehow, in spite of its dark heart, utterly joyous. You won’t be able to get enough of it. I’m grinning as I write this, imagining you hearing it for the first time, wishing I could once again experience that initial rush and sense of beguilement. It’s so very, very special. It’s by The Tubs. They’re from Cardiff. They’re your new favorite band. (www.thetubs.bandcamp.com)

Author rating: 8.5/10