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THIS IS A PRE-ORDER: We expect this to ship on or around MAY 29th, 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.

The Bug Club are back with a new album. Its been a whole seven months
since their last. Where have they been? Every Single Muscle, the bands fifth LP overall, is the third to be released by the Welsh duos esteemed Seattle-based patrons Sub Pop. Since Very Human Features, which emerged in June of 2025, the non-stop tour has seen the BBC 6 Music and KEXP favourites ping-pong across the Atlantic like theyused to the Severn Bridge. Various festival slots in the summer kept themfrom having any sort of holiday - who needs one when you live in Walesanyway? - until it was time to head back to the writing room. Which is mostlikely still a bedroom in Caldicott frequented by a greyhound called Ted(listen out - he shows up in one of the songs).

Ever self-effacing, songwriters Sam (guitar, vocals) and Tilly (bass, vocals) go as far as to claim that theyve been sitting around doing nothing at all
during the song Its Our Manager David. Thats clearly a lie. Every Single
Muscle gets off to a full-throttle, chugging start with Miss Wales 2012,
referencing a competition both Tilly and Sam have actually won. Its the firstof many sub-two-minute tracks on the album, setting the tone for The BugClubs punkiest offering yet and recalling both the short, sharp snaps of theirvery first singles and the grunt of recent releases. So packed is the album withwall-to-wall riffs and lyrical hooks rammed into tight confines that Samactually asks permission to squeeze in a solo during second track A GoodDay For Dying. Hes given two seconds.

Happily, Sam asks again later on and is granted more. Across eighteen tunes theres enough classic Sam/Tilly guitar interplay to satisfy even the most vociferous Bug Club club member and firmly refute the bands own claim that they are only just about technically proficient on our instruments. This records 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 theyll get it in there somehow. On to the words: While Very Human Features did an excellent job of pointing at everyday things and highlighting 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. Self-interested in an entirely new sense of the term, the human form and condition is prodded and inspected from every angle over the course of the album. We get a sense of surreal detachment from the self that sets up the ever-present ennui-laden humour; the last song sees Sam announce hes bored of being human. The Bug Club seem almost suspicious of the concept of being a person - as if theyve woken up in a costume they didnt want to put on and cannot take off. Is three the magic number? Probably not. But Every Single Muscle - Sub Pop album number three for The Bug Club - certainly comes close enough to convince your average strange human person that it might be.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Miss Wales 2012
2. A Good Day for Dying
3. Make It Count
4. Cut to Black
5. Full Range of Motion
6. Pretty as a Magazine
7. Look Like Me
8. How Can We Be Friends
9. Every Single Muscle
10. Shiny and Wet
11. Semi-Automatic
12. In My Short Life
13. Watching the Omnibus
14. It's Our Manager David
15. Yours (If You Want Me)
16. All My Clothes Fell Off
17. Third Best Friend
18. My Uncle Warren Drives a Passat

street date 5/29/2026