“Benefit fraud,” someone jokes when I ask what it takes to sustain a music career in 2023. I am huddled in a flat overlooking south-east London’s Surrey Quays docks with a small cross-section of Gob Nation – the collective name for a universe of bands based mostly in these parts. If it weren’t for the fact that they’re made up of rotating combinations of the same dozen or so musicians, the 10 acts within Gob Nation would seem totally disparate. The omnivorous jangle palette of the Tubs’ recently acclaimed album Dead Meat is a far cry from Sniffany & the Nits’s maniacal punk debut The Unscratchable Itch, which is the tonal inverse of Garden Centre’s guileless art-pop on Searching for a Stream. What they do share is a leftfield sensibility, lacerating wit and snotty attitude. Ask any of them to identify the force that holds it all together and the answer is unanimous: “banter”.
“On a social level, it’s hard to be in bands with people you don’t get on with,” says Owen Williams, who fronts the Tubs and plays various instruments in at least five other bands. “Even though we probably find each other quite annoying sometimes, because we’re such a close group of friends we always end up picking each other.”
“We have quite a specific sense of humour. Most of us are from south Wales and grew up in Cardiff,” adds George Nicholls, who leads the “yacht rock-infused” GN Band, plays guitar in the Tubs and retro oddballs Suep, and formerly Joanna Gruesome – the beloved noise-pop outfit that first brought Nicholls and Williams together with bassist Max Warren and singer-guitarist Lan McArdle. They were bound by their differences even then: a bunch of 80s jangle enthusiasts making music that didn’t slot into the duelling guitar scenes of the early 2010s; they were too abrasive to be twee and too poppy to be hardcore. “We wanted to be part of that DIY indie pop scene but we were also obsessed with being like, ‘But we’re punks as well,’” Williams laughs. “There was this weird tension where we were obviously into pop music but trying to ruin it all the time.”
The designated “head honcho”, Warren established Gob Nation in 2017 to release records and put on shows while living in Brighton – something he’d previously done in Cardiff under the moniker Reeks of Effort. A revolving door of auteurs, the bands are distinguished less by genre than by whoever’s creative voice is to the fore. The Tubs make for easy listening, but Williams’s neurotic lyricism steers them away from genre homage, picking at a range of misfortunes from romantic manipulation to groin rash. Josie Edwards whips up Sniffany & the Nits’ already caustic sound into a frenzy of toxic femininity, while pub-rockers the TSG are boosted by the larger-than-life charisma of Taylor Stewart, who’s like a Glaswegian Liam Gallagher. As well as sharing members, the bands are occasionally linked by overlapping motifs: a hardcore punk gesture in an Ex-Vöid song, a jangly riff by Sniffany & the Nits alluding to the Tubs. “It’s like our personalities are merging,” Williams says. “Which maybe is unhealthy, I don’t know.”
“A lot of us are just quite singular, critical people. And I think that level of harshness upon ourselves unfortunately translates into not really making friends with others,” suggests Edwards, whose illustration work provides much of Gob Nation’s visual identity through album art, gig posters and merch. “It sounds horrible, but we can’t deal with being bored or with people that we don’t find interesting. Someone said recently that we seem like a fucked-up family, and it’s true.”
When everyone moved to London in the late-2010s, Gob Nation became a way of organising projects that were already in motion. A one-stop label, promoter and digital TV channel, it developed into an autonomous machine powered by individual strengths. Edwards provides the design; Stewart directs music videos; Will Deacon (Garden Centre/Suep/ PC World) hosts Gob Nation TV; Matt Green (the Tubs/Sniffany & the Nits) records many of their albums at his studio Head Cold; and Williams is launching a small press called Perfect Angel as an outlet for the collective’s literature, poetry and lyrics. Then there’s Warren, whose administrative chops and “normal” personality keep things operational.
“For someone who’s left his suitcase in America and forgotten his passport when we’re supposed to play a festival in Spain the next day, Max is actually very organised,” says Nicholls.
“When any of us go on tour we huddle behind Max,” Edwards adds. “He has a much more natural way of connecting with the outside world, whereas the rest of us are too caught up in ourselves. Max can chill the fuck out. He can take his shirt off, listen to football on the radio, have a beer and go to bed.”
Gob Nation straddles DIY and mainstream ecosystems. Some bands, such as the Tubs and Suep, are touring heavily with their eyes on signing to bigger labels. Sniffany & the Nits have developed cult appeal, catching the ears of Steve Lamacq and sharing bills with Screaming Females and Deerhoof, while the industrial electronic duo PC World and new wavers Lash move in firmly underground punk circles.
“There’s a funny period where you’re leaving the top of DIY to being at the lower levels of the music industry,” says Warren. “In theory it’s a step up, but in reality you earn a lot less money because suddenly other people’s hands are reaching in. Ultimately we’re treading water constantly, so if someone offers us money: yes please.”
That balance is particularly acute for Suep’s Georgie Stott, who has the steadiest footing in the industry as the keyboardist in Mercury prize-nominated Porridge Radio. “I was on tour pretty much the whole of last year, and I was making enough money to pay rent,” she says. But with Suep starting to climb the same ladder, and figuring out whose floor to sleep on each night becoming less charming with age, the pros and cons are starker. “Obviously I want to keep making music as Suep because that’s my main creative outlet, but am I going to be touring for the next two years to try to build the name of the band? It’s awesome to be able to make money doing something you love. That’s the simple nature of it. But I feel old!”
Financial instability becomes an existential issue as well as a material one. With most members now in their 30s, there’s an “unspoken worry” of becoming increasingly insular the more they lean on each other, and “lifers” through perseverance. The collective’s social structure keeps everyone in orbit, but the London rental market also forces them to live on top of one another in flatshares and guardianships. This makes it incredibly easy to start new projects (Sniffany & the Nits’ debut album was written when its members were living in an abandoned care home in Sydenham, south-east London, during the pandemic; the Tubs’s in a disused police station), but also encourages them to pull rank when things get tough.
Cities change rapidly. Venues shut, scenes fracture and people “drop out” to prioritise careers or families. “Which maybe is why we’re still doing everything with each other – we can rely on that,” McArdle offers. “Occasionally we’ll lose someone to getting an actual job, but mostly everyone still wants to hang out and the best way to do that is to keep making music together.”
As Conservative austerity and cuts to arts funding deplete opportunities for those who don’t have financial support, the UK music landscape has become a binary of major label homogeny and dogged independence. Although not without its struggles, Gob Nation represents a self-sufficient alternative. “My vision for the future is I’d like people to have more ownership over the things they produce, and be able to facilitate culture,” says Nicholls. “But we’re not in that position yet.”
For now, Gob Nation has found an equilibrium that keeps everyone afloat. “I feel so proud of it but I also feel as if we’re getting away with something, like we’re kids playing shop,” says Edwards, citing a “frat house” bond that steels them against the outside world and traditional metrics of success.
“I think a lot of people just say: ‘That’s it, hype’s gone, I’m not going to be a musician any more,’ because they don’t have that community to fall back on,” Williams adds. “That’s the nice thing about this group. We can stray a bit, but we always have something to come back to.”
