{"title":"The Bug Club","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"the-bug-club_quality-pints","title":"Quality Pints","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan id=\"docs-internal-guid-44e11032-7fff-d3de-93e7-174fe510a9df\"\u003eThe Bug Club is Tilly Harris (Bass, Vocals) and Sam Willmett (Vocals, Guitar). Their first offering for the label is “Quality Pints,” a track that 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. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Bug Club","offers":[{"title":"Digital","offer_id":40803040755808,"sku":"795876","price":1.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0110\/1882\/9920\/files\/thebugclub-qualitypints-3600x3600.jpg?v=1715121435"},{"product_id":"the-bug-club_on-the-intricate-inner-workings-of-the-system","title":"On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe 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 summarise 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThird LP On The Intricate Inner Workings Of The System, due 2024 via 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMelody is still ever-present, with the hilariously meta ‘Pop Single’ channelling Ray Davies at his most self aware. You ask for a pop single, that’s what you get - The Bug Club don’t mess about. And it’s this confidently silly strain that gives us ‘Lonsdale Slipons’, which finally sees the UK’s worst ever shoes paid tribute to in song form, and ‘We Don’t Care About That’, which tells us all to stop talking about lots of things. Considering attempting a tentative review of what you’re listening to? Well stop. ‘Better Than Good’ has you covered there, too. You’re getting what you’re given, and thankfully everybody seems happy with that - especially this track’s lo-fi production, Violent Femmes bass and Sterling Morrison solo.  Best to leave the hot takes to The Bug Club, we reckon. This record backs us up.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSo, that’s what they’ve been finishing up during their massive month-long break from gigs. In a bid to avoid being branded layabouts, The Bug Club will support their upcoming Sub Pop release with a US tour in September. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eInitially 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 2020 and first single 'We Don’t Need Room For Lovin’ was released in February 2021. It quickly established The Bug Club as the tongue-in-cheek and live-focused antidote to the previous year’s penned-in pandemic drudgery.  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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEP Launching Moondream One came next complete with 7”, comic book and free jingles (radio stabs are something of a forte for the band), followed by Pure Particles, whose vinyl release included a board game brimming with cult references. Fed up with the conventional approach they then released ‘Intelectuals’: a standalone track that was actually a five-track ‘song suite’ like some kind of streaming-model-snubbing, Telecaster-bashing answer to Bach. Highbrow musos took a lyrical beating for the ages. Second standalone release ‘Two Beauties’ marked release number two for 2022 and built up to the appearance of debut album Green Dream in F# by October. Lead single ‘It’s Art’ encapsulated The Bug Club’s ethos good and proper: they’re only in this for fun, ‘you’re not supposed to feel it’. But they’re self effacing, because everybody does feel it. And it feels great.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe following January they decided to pull their fingers out, get some disguises and support themselves on tour as Mr Anyway’s Holey Spirits. A live album documented this, then they got abstract with titles and put out picture disc Picture This!. By the autumn of 2023 it was time for forty-seven track, poetry-infused double album Rare Birds: Hour of Song. Their most ambitious realisation on The Bug Club’s creative world so far, typically smart and surreal wordplay (as well as their standard enthusiastic obscenity) met with everything from raucous punk to gentle anti-folk. Ivor Cutler seemed to have left his surreal stamp somewhere - the fully illustrated picture book included with the record helped suggest that - but they’d never heard him until somebody else made the comparison. Happy accidents abound. Things went pair-shaped with Sam and Tilly in 2024 after Dan swapped his sticks for his gardening tools and a quiet life in the countryside. During a trip to America they caught the eye of Sub Pop. And guess what: new music is hurtling towards their ever-growing loyal fanbase who can look forward to a year for The Bug Club with stuff going on, constantly. Who’d have thunk it?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Bug Club","offers":[{"title":"Loser (color) LP","offer_id":41059118645344,"sku":"716560","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"LP","offer_id":42684802826336,"sku":"716561","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":41059118678112,"sku":"716562","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":41059118710880,"sku":"716566","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0110\/1882\/9920\/files\/Screenshot2026-04-07at1.18.30PM.png?v=1775593238"},{"product_id":"the-bug-club_have-u-ever-been-2-wales","title":"Have U Ever Been 2 Wales","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Bug Club, return with “Have U Ever Been 2 Wales,” a joyous new ode to their beloved home country that features upbeat, regionally referential lyrics like \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e“Have you ever been to Wales? It's good, it's goo-ooh-ooh-ooh-hood\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e” and \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e“...every choir from Caldicot to Treorchy will sing it proud.\"\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Bug Club","offers":[{"title":"Digital","offer_id":41634282897504,"sku":"717016","price":1.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0110\/1882\/9920\/files\/thubugclub-haveueverbeen2wales-4000px.jpg?v=1740424016"},{"product_id":"the-bug-club_very-human-features","title":"Very Human Features","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Bug Club are back, again, for their annual appointment at the garage rock makers’ market, where they’re flogging yet another pedigree record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLP number four, Very Human Features, arrives June 13, 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 hear about and that’s as far as we get. This record 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, a new batch of typically playful, riff-laden, smart Bug Club Tunes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut first, a standalone single, because that’s how things are done here. “Have you ever been to Wales?”, asks the band in “Have U Ever Been 2 Wales.” 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePersonally, I hate it when an unnecessary personal opinion is inserted where it’s not needed - band bios, for example - in order to offload an uninteresting individual hot take. Maybe that’s why this stuff works: thankfully, 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-infused belter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s no surprise that, in poking fun at the familiar, the humour is by track two turned inwards and it’s The Bug Club themselves in their own firing line. In “Twirling in the Middle,” after taking a detour to insult both airport-littering spy-fiction writer Andy McNab and the collective authors of the Bible, Sam and Tilly sing, “did you think this was over, cos we’re just getting started.” A reference to their prolific output perhaps - this is the fourth LP since 2022, not to mention all the EPs and standalone odds and ends, after all. Then they twist the knife further, hari-kari style, when they raise eyebrows at their own tempo change (“are we doing the rocksteady?”) and then add “just when you’re ready for this to be over, we’ll start playing solos” before doing exactly that. And it’s a proper solo too - they always are. It’s a rollercoaster unpicking of whatever-it-is The Bug Club do, while at the same time building on the work done in previous albums and presenting us with layers of creativity piled up atop one another.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSam and Tilly, combined. There’s a name for that - and it’s tempting to think that they might be, given all the joking around. But the multi-dimensional nature to The Bug Club is what makes Very Human Features just as relistenable as their previous work. “Jealous Boy,” “Appropriate Emotions” and “Muck (Very Human Features)” all lend the LP a more poignant tone. The first tackles expectations and comparisons, with a loud-quiet-loud structure reflecting the ups-and-downs and outbursts unavoidable in frustration and anger. “Appropriate Emotions” manages to be deeply relatable while making its singers sound about as removed from the human experience as possible - perhaps that’s why it’s relatable. And “Muck (Very Human Features)” combines some of the folkier and spoken-word elements of album two, Rare Birds: Hour of Song, to ruminate on one’s place in the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInitially 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 2020 and first single “We Don’t Need Room For Lovin’” was released in February 2021, followed by the EP Launching Moondream One. It quickly established The Bug Club as the tongue-in-cheek and live-focused antidote to the previous year’s penned-in pandemic drudgery. BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley was an early champion.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePure Particles followed, whose vinyl release included a board game brimming with cult references. Fed up with the conventional approach they then released “Intelectuals”: a standalone track that was actually a five-track ‘song suite’ like some kind of streaming-model-snubbing, Telecaster-bashing answer to Bach. Highbrow musos took a lyrical beating for the ages. Second standalone release “Two Beauties” marked release number two for 2022 and built up to the appearance of debut album Green Dream in F# by October. The following January they decided to pull their fingers out, get some disguises and support themselves on tour as Mr Anyway’s Holey Spirits. A live album documented this, then they got abstract with titles and put out picture disc Picture This!. By the autumn of 2023 it was time for forty-seven track, poetry-infused double album Rare Birds: Hour of Song.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDuring a trip to America they caught the eye of Sub Pop, just in time to get them on board to serve up a beefy slab of garage-punk on On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System, gaining an appropriately beefed-up stateside following in the process. The partnership proved fruitful, and with Sup Pop firmly in The Bug Club club they got cracking on 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Bug Club","offers":[{"title":"Loser (color) LP","offer_id":41725038723168,"sku":"716830","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":41725038690400,"sku":"716832","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":41725038657632,"sku":"716836","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0110\/1882\/9920\/files\/TheBugClub_VeryHumanFeatures_Mockup_USVinyl_2000x1417_f2f30fdc-5337-4268-b95b-301a8f678687.jpg?v=1742788814"},{"product_id":"the-bug-club_every-single-muscle","title":"Every Single Muscle","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Bug Club are back with a new album. It’s been a whole eleven months since their last. Where have they been?\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eEvery Single Muscle\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, the band’s fifth LP, arrives \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMay 29th, 2026\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e via Sub Pop, making it a hat-trick for the Welsh duo and their esteemed Seattle-based patrons. Since \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eVery Human Features\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, which emerged in June of 2025, the non-stop tour has seen the BBC 6 Music and KEXP favorites ping-pong across the Atlantic like they used to the Severn Bridge. Various festival slots in the summer kept them from having any sort of holiday - who needs one when you live in Wales anyway? - until it was time to head back to the writing room. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSo that answers that first question. Not that you’d have otherwise known. Ever self-effacing, songwriters Sam (guitar, vocals) and Tilly (bass, vocals) go as far as to claim that they’ve been sitting around “doing nothing at all” during track “It’s Our Manager David.” That’s clearly a lie. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eEvery Single Muscle\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e gets off to a full-throttle, chugging start with “Miss Wales 2012,” referencing a competition both Tilly and Sam have actually won. Dead serious. It’s the first of many sub-two-minute tracks on the album, setting the tone for The Bug Club’s punkiest offering yet and recalling both the short, sharp snaps of their very first singles and the grunt of recent releases. So packed is the album with wall-to-wall riffs and lyrical hooks rammed into tight confines that Sam actually asks permission to squeeze in a solo during second track “A Good Day for Dying.” He’s given two seconds. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNot that we’re short-changed, though, because Sam asks again later on and is granted more. Across eighteen tunes there’s enough classic Sam\/Tilly guitar interplay to satisfy even the most vociferous Bug Club club member and firmly refute the band’s own claim that they are only “just about technically proficient on our instruments.” “Full Range of Motion” has a choppy rhythm that sits atop drummer Tom’s tight beat and serves to remind us all of Minutemen, for a minute. “Make It Count” brings sweet melody and call and response, while “All My Clothes Fell Off” allows for a slower paced ballad that builds to a crescendo that would not be out of place in the world of classic rock. “Cut to Black” combines a Sparks-esque falsetto and Tilly’s melodic bass playing with a rhythm something close-ish to what Klaus Dinger used to do for Neu! And closer “My Uncle Warren Drives a Passat” sees them doing a bit of a left turn and swapping out guitars for keys. This record’s an exercise in efficient maximalism - the musical equivalent of your dad packing the car for a holiday. Bring what you like; space is tight but they’ll get it in there somehow. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eOn to the words, because with these guys those are important. While \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eVery Human Features\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e did an excellent job of pointing at everyday things and highlighting their absurdity, on \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eEvery Single Muscle\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e The Bug Club look more closely at themselves. Not so much in an introspective way, though. More in a way an alien might probe a captive specimen on an intergalactic gurney. Horror movies get their “body” subgenre, now garage rock albums get theirs too. Self-interested in an entirely new sense of the term, the human form and condition is prodded and inspected from every angle throughout the course of the album. “Look Like Me” sees them singing about their own appearance, while on “How Can We Be Friends” they are preoccupied with others’. “Every Single Muscle” itemizes organs as if they belong on a shopping list, and both “Make It Count” and “Pretty as a Magazine” bemoan the fact people don’t know what to do with their own bodies. Altogether, we get a sense of surreal detachment from the self that sets up the ever-present ennui-laden humor; the last song sees Sam announce he’s “bored of being human.” The Bug Club seem almost suspicious of the concept of being a person - as if they’ve woken up in a costume they didn’t want to put on and cannot take off.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially 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 2020 and first single “We Don’t Need Room for Lovin” was released in February 2021, followed by EP \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eLaunching Moondream One\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e. It quickly established The Bug Club as the tongue-in-cheek and live-focused antidote to the previous year’s penned-in pandemic drudgery. BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley was an early champion.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003ePure Particles\u003c\/em\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003efollowed, whose vinyl release included a board game brimming with cult references. Fed up with the conventional approach they then released “Intelectuals”: a standalone track that was actually a five-track “song suite” like some kind of streaming-model-snubbing, Telecaster-bashing answer to Bach. Highbrow musos took a lyrical beating for the ages. Second standalone release “Two Beauties” marked release number two for 2022 and built up to the appearance of debut album \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eGreen Dream in F#\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e by October. The following January they decided to pull their fingers out, get some disguises and support themselves on tour as Mr. Anyways Holey Spirits. A live album documented this, then they got abstract with titles and put out the picture disc \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003ePicture This!\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e By the autumn of 2023 it was time for forty-seven track, poetry-infused double album \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eRare Birds: Hour of Song\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eDuring a trip to America they caught the eye of Sub Pop, just in time to get them on board to serve up a beefy slab of garage-punk on \u003cem\u003eOn the Inner Workings of the System\u003c\/em\u003e, gaining an appropriately beefed-up stateside following in the process. The partnership proved fruitful, and with Sup Pop firmly in The Bug Club club they got cracking on \u003cem\u003eVery Human Features\u003c\/em\u003e. Is three the magic number? Probably not. But \u003cem\u003eEvery Single Muscle\u003c\/em\u003e - number three for The Bug Club and Sub Pop - certainly comes close enough to convince your average strange human person that it might be.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Bug Club","offers":[{"title":"Loser (color) LP","offer_id":42585399885920,"sku":"717270","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":42585399918688,"sku":"717272","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":42585399951456,"sku":"717276","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0110\/1882\/9920\/files\/TheBugClub_EverySingleMuscle_Mockup_LP_US_2000x1417_52c7fef1-2383-4aad-91ee-6331cf13a5e0.jpg?v=1771391147"}],"url":"https:\/\/megamart.subpop.com\/collections\/the-bug-club\/format-lp.oembed","provider":"Sub Pop Mega Mart","version":"1.0","type":"link"}