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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Tim Jonze

‘Saying you’re in a jangle-pop band is a red flag’: the Tubs talk speed, squalor and their glorious second album

‘Maybe a bit unsustainable’ … The Tubs (l-r) George Nicholls, Owen Williams, Taylor Stewart and Max Warren.
‘Maybe a bit unsustainable’ … The Tubs (l-r) George Nicholls, Owen Williams, Taylor Stewart and Max Warren. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

‘Most of the songs were written in the midst of a breakdown,” says Owen Williams, lead singer with indie rock group the Tubs. “My long-term relationship had ended, so I was drunk constantly and being kind of obsessive about the people I was dating.”

Williams doesn’t really need to tell me that he was in a difficult place while writing his band’s second album, Cotton Crown – the evidence is in the lyrics. Tubs songs might jangle deceptively with intricate riffs and Teenage Fanclub-style harmonies, but the words are loaded with self-laceration. Manipulative, irritating, sycophantic, unreliable: these are just some of the ways Williams portrays himself on record.

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