Shortly earlier than founding his jangle quartet the Tubs, Owen Williams poured himself into a really totally different ardour mission: a prickly novel impressed by the suicide of his mom, people singer and author Charlotte Greig. “It was 2016 and the Trauma Industrial Complicated was revving into gear,” Williams defined in a Substack publish; “I needed to be exploited too.” Alas, he recounts, the market was not as ripe for his type of unsentimental grief as he’d anticipated. Each agent handed on the e book, and he didn’t take the rejection effectively: “There’s a particular sort of humiliation in failing to hawk your massive tragedy.”
The sunshine on the finish of his spiral of sleepless, Xanax-addicted months got here partially from the surprising success of the Tubs, who have been attracting curiosity past the area of interest corners that also get excited a few new jangle-pop album. After the nice and cozy reception to the band’s dourly tuneful 2023 debut Lifeless Meat, the concept nagged at Williams: Maybe there is perhaps a again door to repurpose a bit little bit of the novel that no one needed. He discovered that the songs for the Tubs’ follow-up Cotton Crown got here shortly.
Cotton Crown doesn’t shy from the inherent discomfort of the subject material. That’s the artist’s mom on the album cowl, breastfeeding a new child Williams in a graveyard in a black and white photograph initially used for one in every of her 7″s. The closing tune, “Unusual,” contains an anecdote a few stranger grabbing Williams’ arm at his mom’s wake and suggesting he may write a tune about it, an origin story he appendixes with an apology (“Effectively, whoever the hell you might be/I’m sorry, I assume that is it”). “The Factor Is” opens the report with the sort of self-loathing endemic of any individual who’s going by means of an excessive amount of shit to be any good in a relationship.
The distinction between a tragic tune and a tragic novel, in fact, is that given their in-and-out nature, unhappy songs aren’t almost as suffocating—particularly not the way in which the Tubs’ play them. Despite Williams’ glum lyrics and chilly, stricken voice, the music all the time chugs alongside merrily. “Freak Mode” barrels ahead with the pep of Bob Mould at his most frolicksome, whereas the jubilant “Narcissist” rings out with Johnny Marr chime. Even Williams’ dispatches from the deepest throes of despair are performed as absolute romps. “In some way sitting in my empty room/Is the one factor I wanna do,” Williams sings on “Phantasm” over rollicking pub rock.
As all the time, guitarist George Nicholls and backing vocalist Lan McArdle function the sugar and creamer to Williams’ black espresso. (McArdle, William’s previous bandmate in Joanna Grotesque and current one in Ex-Vöid, isn’t a full member of the Tubs, but their harmonies are so integral to the pleasure that it’s troublesome to think about their albums with out them.) If Lifeless Meat performed like a misplaced IRS Information launch from 1987, Cotton Crown performs like one from 1988—a contact clearer, a contact extra refined, maybe, however essentially of a chunk. The album’s unbelievable feat is that, even with its inherent tragedy, Cotton Crown is by some means an excellent breezier, extra agreeable hear. It’s not typically that sorrow goes down so simply.
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