PRE-ORDER: The Tubs "Hard Life" CD

THIS IS A PRE-ORDER: We expect this to ship on or around SEPTEMBER 11th, 2026. Any items ordered with this will be held until they can ship together. If you need other items faster please place a separate order for those items.

Upon arriving in the USA for The Tubs’ first tour of the country, frontman Owen Williams told The New Yorker, “We’re here to unite the country. We’re gonna come, like, three times. By that point, I think this place will start healing.” Then, joyously, they did just that, piling into a van and criss-crossing the States, bringing their literary, bleary-eyed, world-weary, night-of-your-life highwire act to the masses when it was needed most. The Tubs have never lacked for ambition — on Hard Life, theirs is to complicate the Tub-ullar experience. Having perfected their chemistry across two prior albums, hundreds of shows, and an ever-expanding universe of bands affiliated with London’s Gob Nation Collective the London-based Celtic jangle boyband push themselves further into the shimmering heart of virtuosic indie rock. 

The hard line Williams takes here and elsewhere on Hard Life further troubles one’s idea of a Tubs song. The persona familiar to listeners of Cotton Crown and Dead Meat — to quote Williams, “navel gazing about romantic abjection, London squalor, and the indignities of grief and OCD” — is still present, but so too is a second voice, steelier and more experienced. “The second persona doesn’t have much time for the first,” Williams explains, “often haranguing him for his self-indulgence and immaturity; sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly.” 

On Hard Life, these voices argue, pester one another, merge into each other, and break apart, sometimes over the course of a single song. They’re two sides of the same coin, people who’ve experienced 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.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Hard Life
2. Who’s Gonna Love You Now?
3. If You Don’t Love Me
4. Stoop to Me
5. Heaven Or London
6. Didn’t I Say?
7. Do Yourself A Favor
8. Now And Then
9. The Way It Goes
10. Hell
11. In Your Place
12. As Long As You Leave

street date 9/11/2026