THE TUBS BLAST THROUGH BRILLIANT AND JOYFUL LONDON HEADLINE |

LIVE REVIEW | THE TUBS w/ Spike, Bramwell | SCALA, LONDON | 30th September 2026 by Morris Shamah

“Sorry about that” repeats Owen Williams for the third time, after yet another extended bit of banter from Taylor Stewart. It’s all part of the act, of course – as the drummer in The Tubs, Taylor only has a microphone for the sake of riffing. He doesn’t sing. Owen, lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist, can barely keep the grin off his face while pretending to apologise for his antics. It’s just one bit of any that makes The Tubs such a joyful live band, as the raw love they all have for the game that is being a rock and roll band is unavoidably infectious.

This show is the penultimate of their two-week UK tour in support of their third LP, Hard Life, which was released on 11th September. They’re off to tour Europe and America in the coming months, but they’ve started their promotional efforts here at home.

Joining them on this leg of the tour is Bramwell, a wildly talented group of musicians whose music is somehow a cross between the percussive melodies of The Who and the unfiltered punk of Titus Andronicus. They can clearly play, especially the drummer, who seems able to get more unique sounds out of a single cymbal than previously possible while still keeping time, but what they have in musical chops they lack in stage charisma. A few well placed hooks and a bit of stagecraft and they’d be a formidable force. Taylor from The Tubs joins them on vocals for their final song, and as he runs across the stage and truly performs, you really get a sense of the potential this band has.

Bramwell (Morris Shamah/Northern Exposure)

Spike is a special guest second support act for this London show. Fellow Gob Nation artist, Spike is the synth-pop project of composer Hannah McLoughlin. Spike commands the stage alone, accompanied only by a small keyboard and a laptop (and, at the end, some kind of electronic wind instrument midi controller). She prowls and pounces, more gothic than goth, and is either hilarious or gloriously new-new-wave depending on your taste.

Come 9pm, The Tubs walk out, multiple cans of lager in hand, to a loud and full Wednesday night Scala. They waste no time going into ‘Hard Life‘, the title track from the new LP. They play fast and loud, the foursome now tight and polished – musically, anyway – from spending a lot of time on the road. They may not be as raucous as they used to be, but they’re still here primarily for the fun. When Dan Lucas, guitarist, slightly messes up an outro solo – subtly enough that no one in the audience noticed – Owen and Taylor joked about failing under pressure for what seemed like longer than the song itself.

The Tubs (Morris Shamah/Northern Exposure

The Welsh jangle-pop group are laser focused in performance. Max Warren on bass, back in the band after an extended leave due to a car accident, has monumental presence. His control of the low end is propulsive and balanced. Taylor on drums isn’t flashy or distracting, leaving enough room for Owen and Dan to really own the songs with their guitars. Dan’s Rickenbacker is critical to The Tubs’ sound, now, the bright jangle sounds really shining through the mix. The four of them come together brilliantly, as only a road-worn band really can. They’re as genuine and unique live as the songwriting is on record, massively cathartic, wonderfully there to sing along to.

Where The Tubs themselves may have focused up and stopped, say, pushing people around the stage with their heads, the crowd has picked up the slack. The Wednesday night audience was a wonderful mess, one of those mosh pits that doesn’t have any space for a circle but will still stop to help you find your glasses. There was ample successful crowdsurfing – much to the band’s delight – but an equal amount of failed attempts. The crowd was loud and boisterous from the first note, which is great, because the entire set was an hour including the encore, not exactly giving them time to “warm up.”

In fact, that’s probably the biggest criticism one could have for this show – it was simply too short. Three records in, The Tubs have more than enough songs to push out their set another 30 or 45 minutes, and there is certainly enough fun being had, both on stage and in the crowd, to justify it. There’s a certain delight that is found in the seemingly careless efforts of your favourite “jangle-pop” band not being taken too seriously, and to some degree that’s been a signature of The Tubs from the beginning, but there’s leaving people wanting more, and there’s simply not playing for long enough, and The Tubs are seriously flirting with that line. As a point of criticism, this comes from a place of love – we only want more because what we get is so devilishly fun, and so purely, unabashedly, uniquely The Tubs.