The Tubs PRE-ORDER: - Hard Life (Natural w/ Blue + Yellow Swirl Vinyl LP)

Upon arriving in the United States for The Tubs’ first tour of the country, frontman Owen Williams told The New Yorker, “We’re here to unite the country.” They piled into a van and criss-crossed the States, bringing their literary, bleary-eyed, world-weary, night-of-your-life highwire act to the masses. Along the way, they signed to Merge Records, who will release The Tubs’ third full-length album, Hard Life, on September 11, 2026. Having perfected their sound across two albums and hundreds of shows, the London-based Celtic jangle boyband push themselves even further into the shimmering heart of virtuosic indie rock, with the addition of fiddle player Chris Haigh adding a key element to the album’s lushness.

On Hard Life, the persona familiar to listeners of Cotton Crown and Dead Meat is still present, but so too is a second voice, steelier and more experienced. These voices argue, pester one another, merge into each other, and break apart, sometimes over the course of a single song. Lead single “Who’s Gonna Love You Now?” puts the scold front and center, while the album explores grief, disappointment, regret, and shame, emerging from the wreckage as changed men. “I’m interested in the way sympathy and patience for someone suffering always runs out eventually,” Williams says. “How this can be a good and liberating thing as well as a sad and brutal thing. But mostly they’re just pop songs.” Exquisite, irresistible pop songs. Spin them until the healing starts, then spin them again.