Shortly earlier than founding his jangle quartet the Tubs, Owen Williams poured himself into a really completely 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 put up; “I needed to be exploited too.” Alas, he recounts, the market was not as ripe for his model of unsentimental grief as he’d anticipated. Each agent handed on the ebook, and he didn’t take the rejection effectively: “There’s a particular type of humiliation in failing to hawk your massive tragedy.”
The sunshine on the finish of his spiral of sleepless, Xanax-addicted months got here partly from the surprising success of the Tubs, who have been attracting curiosity past the area of interest corners that also get excited a couple of new jangle-pop album. After the nice and cozy reception to the band’s dourly tuneful 2023 debut Useless Meat, the concept nagged at Williams: Maybe there may be a again door to repurpose somewhat little bit of the novel that no one needed. He discovered that the songs for the Tubs’ follow-up Cotton Crown got here rapidly.
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 picture initially used for one in all her 7″s. The closing track, “Unusual,” contains an anecdote a couple of stranger grabbing Williams’ arm at his mom’s wake and suggesting he might write a track 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 document with the type of self-loathing endemic of any person who’s going by way of an excessive amount of shit to be any good in a relationship.
The distinction between a tragic track and a tragic novel, in fact, is that given their in-and-out nature, unhappy songs aren’t practically as suffocating—particularly not the best way the Tubs’ play them. Regardless of Williams’ glum lyrics and chilly, stricken voice, the music at all times 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. “By some means sitting in my empty room/Is the one factor I wanna do,” Williams sings on “Phantasm” over rollicking pub rock.
As at all times, 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 tough to think about their albums with out them.) If Useless Meat performed like a misplaced IRS Data launch from 1987, Cotton Crown performs like one from 1988—a contact clearer, a contact extra refined, maybe, however basically of a bit. The album’s inconceivable feat is that, even with its inherent tragedy, Cotton Crown is someway a good breezier, extra agreeable pay attention. It’s not typically that sorrow goes down so simply.
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