The Tubs

The Tubs have been locked on the speakers around here since the early singles and it’s great to see ‘em grow into indie mainstays bumped up to the big leagues this year with a Merge release. The wider stage doesn’t dim the band’s sound, and Hard Life still leans heavy into their worn-resolve regarding the chafe of class and capital set to a Celtic lilt. They juxtapose Richard Thompson’s poisoned heart, Dexy’s patched-knee poetics, and the grandiosity of The Go-Betweens. The new record finds the band pushing a bit beyond their jangled template too, adding in some deep furrows from Chris Haigh’s fiddle. The passages; particularly the closing of “If You Don’t Love Me,” and the following romp, “Stoop To Me,” slip further towards shades of folk that cast a shadow over the new album.

For his part, Owen Williams remains one of the sharpest voices in pop, lacing a literate wit through his sober-up sighs in ways that capture the lucid hindsight of long nights lined with pints like few of his peers. The band plays with production on a wider scale this time around, threading a few effects through the early half of the album, but the hooks and hangdog hubris serve them just as well as these few pop dalliances. For me it’s the moments of stripped bare soul — the quiet desperation of “Didn’t I Say?”, the resolute defiance of “Stoop To Me. — that pull this well beyond their beginning bouts. The deeper well of desire, self-deprecation, and smirking resolve make for more interesting moments than any vocal padding. Though, I am a sucker for some synth work in “Do Yourself a Favor.” Hard Life is the sound of a band in transition, but it’s filled with high water marks and hard-won charms. We’re all witnessing the turn towards the next chapter and I hope its just one of many more to come.

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