Earlier this year, The Tubs announced their signing to Merge Records with an incredible cover of Metallica’s “Fade to Black.”Today, they announce their new album, Hard Life, out September 11th and release the lead single, “Who’s Gonna Love You Now.” Having perfected their sound across two albums and hundreds of shows, the London-based Celtic jangle boyband — Owen Williams (vocals, guitar, keyboards, bass), Dan Lucas (guitar), Taylor Stewart (drums), and Max Warren (bass) — push themselves even further into the shimmering heart of virtuosic indie rock. The band have also outlined an extensive North American tour, returning to some of their favorite cities and fast food joints in the US and beyond. Tickets go on sale Friday, 6/26 at 10am local time.
The Tubs persona familiar to listeners of Cotton Crown and Dead Meat — to quote Williams, “navel gazing about romantic abjection, London squalor, and the indignities of grief and OCD” — is still present on Hard Life, but so too is a second voice, steelier and more experienced. “The second persona doesn’t have much time for the first,” Williams explains, “often haranguing him for his self-indulgence and immaturity; sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly.”
It’s the scold who takes center stage on lead single, “Who’s Gonna Love You Now?” His questions, from the titular one to more concrete concerns like “Who’s gonna pay the rent?” existing in mocking opposition to ideas like moving to the city and really starting to live. Though Williams plays the crank, the song is a raver, guitars ringing out over an organ-brightened horizon. “It’s your life,” Williams sings, the life chugging away beneath him sounding exceptionally keen.
Of “Who’s Gonna Love You Now,” Williams says: “This is a sort of Northern Soul, Royal Headache influenced pop number with organs. The lyrics are from my scold persona – it’s a kind of anti-sexual freedom, pro-monogamy song. I sermonise that the other Owen will end up lonely and unhappy if he takes a grass is greener approach to life, moves to London and so on. I think the scold doesn’t live in London. Whereas I and the classic Tubs persona do.”
Listen to “Who’s Gonna Love You Now”
On Hard Life, these voices argue, pester one another, merge into each other, and break apart, sometimes over the course of a single song. They’re two sides of the same coin, people who’ve experienced grief, disappointment, regret, and shame, emerging from the wreckage as changed men. “I’m interested in the way sympathy and patience for someone suffering always runs out eventually,” Williams says. “How this can be a good and liberating thing as well as a sad and brutal thing. But mostly they’re just pop songs.” Exquisite, irresistible pop songs. Spin them until the healing starts, then spin them again.
On Hard Life The Tubs are joined by frequent collaborators Lan McArdle (vocals), George Nicholls (guitar), and Rachel Kenedy (keyboards), all of whom have orbited various Tubs and Gob Nation-adjacent efforts dating back to Joanna Gruesome, as well as fiddle player Chris Haigh.
For more info and upcoming tour dates for The Tubs visit their artist page here.