The Bug Club

Brudenell presents The Bug Club, Friday 5 June 2026, 6:00 pm, Brudenell Social Club.

With support from Casual Smart

The Bug Club are back with a new album. It’s been seven months since their last. Where have they been?
Every Single Muscle, the band’s fifth LP, arrives 29 May 2026 via Sub Pop, making it a hat-trick for the Welsh duo and their Seattle-based patrons. Since Very Human Features, which emerged in June 2025, the tour has seen the BBC 6 Music and KEXP favourites travel across the Atlantic like they used to the Severn Bridge. Various festival slots in the summer kept them from having any sort of holiday until it was time to head back to the writing room.

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’. Every Single Muscle gets off to a chugging start with ‘Miss Wales 2012’, referencing a competition both Tilly and Sam have won. It’s the first of many sub-two-minute tracks on the album, recalling the short snaps of their first singles and recent releases. The album features concise tracks with riffs and lyrical hooks; on second track ‘A Good Day For Dying’ Sam asks permission to squeeze in a solo and is given two seconds.

Across eighteen tunes there is classic Sam/Tilly guitar interplay, despite 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 steady beat, recalling Minutemen. ‘Make It Count’ brings melody and call and response, while ‘All My Clothes Fell Off’ is a slower paced ballad that builds to a crescendo. ‘Cut To Black’ combines a Sparks-esque falsetto and Tilly’s melodic bass playing with a rhythm close to what Klaus Dinger used to do for Neu! Closer ‘My Uncle Warren Drives A Passat’ takes a left turn and swaps out guitars for keys.

While Very Human Features pointed at everyday things and highlighted their absurdity, on Every Single Muscle 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. Focused on the human form and condition, the songs are prodded and inspected from many angles. ‘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’ itemises organs as if they belong on a shopping list, and both ‘Make It Count’ and ‘Pretty As A Magazine’ note that people don’t know what to do with their own bodies. Altogether, there is a sense of surreal detachment from the self that sets up the ennui-laden humour; 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.

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 2020 and first single ‘We Don’t Need Room For Lovin’’ was released in February 2021, followed by EP Launching Moondream One. Pure Particles followed. They then released ‘Intellectuals’, a standalone track that was a five-track ‘song suite’. Second standalone release ‘Two Beauties’ preceded debut album Green Dream in F# in October 2022. The following January they supported themselves on tour as Mr Anyway’s Holey Spirits, documented on a live album, then released picture disc Picture This!. By autumn 2023 they issued the forty-seven track, poetry-infused double album Rare Birds: Hour of Song.

During a trip to America they caught the eye of Sub Pop and released On The Inner Workings Of The System, gaining a stateside following. The partnership continued with Very Human Features. Every Single Muscle is their third release with Sub Pop.