The Bug Club are back, again, for their annual appointment at the garage rock makers’ market, where they’re flogging yet another pedigree record. LP number four, 'Very Human Features', arrives hot on the heels of the band’s first Sub Pop release, 2024’s 'On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System'. That record saw the band continue their love affair with BBC Radio 6, start up a new one with KEXP thanks to a session with them, and crop up in the pages of the NME. Anything else from the bucket list? Oh yeah, festival slots including packing home ground Green Man’s Walled Garden to its non-existent rafters. Then shows across the US in those venues us Brits tend to only hear about.

This record - a new batch of typically playful, riff-laden, smart Bug Club tunes - gives the band an excuse to continue their never-ending tour and feed their baying fans, engorged and expectant thanks to this band’s relentless record-releasing hot streak. “Have you ever been to Wales?”, asks the band in the album’s lead single. ”If not, why not? It’s good." A new, discordant national anthem, if they didn’t already have a decent harmonious one. Oh, to be from a country where national pride is something other than the mark of a tosser. Starting as a classic, chugging chantalong, it’s interrupted by what sounds like an alien choir before they let rip. Think Dinosaur Jr. with a job at the tourist board. And Welsh. Definitely Welsh. On 'Very Human Features' The Bug Club have continued in their habit of presenting as a collective mind. Two-in-one. Rarely do you find a band with two creative forces that have such a singular, shared perspective, sense of humour and knack for a pop melody. In 'Beep Boop Computers' vocalists Sam (also on guitar) and Tilly (on bass) swap between “I”s, “my”s and “we”s as if there isn’t any difference between the lot, all the while skewering interpersonal relationships and experiences in a glorious, glam rock dismantling of the human aspects the album’s title references. Staying on topic, 'How to Be a Confidante' does that-thing-The-Bug-Club-really-know-how-to-do where they, again speaking as two voices from the same mind, pluck out common aspects of how we all live and make them sound ridiculous. The surreal is in the familiar, not in ignoring the familiar - The Bug Club know this and that understanding joins an unrelenting bassline in forming the backbone of this garage rock-infused belter. Having gained an appropriately beefed-up stateside following thanks to the beefy slab of garage-punk on 'On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System', and the band’s subsequent US tour, The Bug Club’s fruitful partnership with Sup Pop gets even tastier with 'Very Human Features'. An assured and endlessly witty whirlwind of literary, self-referential, good-humoured rock ‘n’ roll, the new record sees the band riding their ever-swelling wave of popularity as if it’s a quick whizz around the Caldicot Aldi carpark on a pair of rollerskates. Long may it continue.

TRACK LISTING

1. Full Grown Man
2. Twirling In The Middle
3. Jealous Boy
4. Young Reader
5. Beep Boop Computers
6. Muck (Very Human Features)
7. When The Little Choo Choo Train Toots His Little Horn
8. How To Be A Confidante
9. Living In The Future
10. Tales Of A Visionary Teller
11. The Sound Of Communism
12. Blame Me
13. Appropriate Emotions

The way you’re saying it, “prolific” isn’t the right word for The Bug Club. You’ve got to say it with the trademark Welsh lilt and pay due homage to this inimitable band’s origins in the renowned hit factory of Caldicot, South Wales. Do that, and you’re about right with how to summarize a group who’ve released ten singles, two albums, two EPs, three things nobody knew how to describe, and an album under a different band’s name, all since 2021, and while playing 200+ gigs a year.

Initially comprising the songwriting core of Sam Willmett (vocals/guitar) and Tilly Harris (vocals/bass) with Dan Matthew (drums), The Bug Club started plying their trade in 2016. They were signed by UK label Bingo Records in Autumn of 2020. BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley was an early champion, hammering the single, booking the band in for a session as soon as it was allowed, and rightfully praising songwriters capable of singing the whole alphabet in a two-minute song and making it work.

Third LP On The Intricate Inner Workings Of The System - their first for Sub Pop - sees the band serve up a beefy slab of their speciality Modern-Lovers-meets-Nuggets garage rock. There’s B-52’s call-and-response fun mixed with AC/DC power chord grunt. Leaning towards fast-paced punk, opening double salvo “War Movies” and “Quality Pints” sets out the stall: duel vocal piss-taking, surreal takes on everyday topics that go full circle and become profound, riffs all day long and then all the next day too. “Quality Pints” deals with the pressing concerns of any conscientious touring outfit, taking to heart the rule of the three R’s as penned by renowned fellow pints fan Mark E. Smith of The Fall. Repetition, repetition, repetition. If it’s that important, which it is, it’s worth saying again. “War Movies” dresses distorted chugging with a comprehensive ‘best of’ list for the genre, with Sam Willmett offering a solo casually chucked out in a way that will make your dad promptly give up any resurgent guitar playing ambitions. And “A Bit Like James Bond” tackles the UK’s sleaziest undercover export at the same time as the embarrassing ego problem that besets much of its population - but it’s only heavy(ish) in the fun, loads-of-riffs sense. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's hard not to love a track called 'Quality Pints', and this slab of well-humoured garage rock, punky drive and snarling vocal hooks more than lives up to the brilliant title. It's fun all round, and brilliantly done. Brings to mind the Lovely Eggs or CTMF, a top outing from one of the hardest working bands in the business.

TRACK LISTING

1. War Movies
2. Quality Pints
3. Pop Single
4. Best Looking Strangers In The Cemetery
5. A Bit Like James Bond
6. We Don't Care About That
7. Lonsdale Slipons
8. Better Than Good
9. Actual Pain
10. Cold. Hard. Love.
11. The Intricate Inner Workings Of The System