Two new-ish records this week. The erotic pop of FKA Twigs and the power-pop of The Tubs. One is extremely solid, the other is probably the worst album I’ll cover in this column in 2025. Find out which is which!
The Tubs
Cotton Crown
2025, 8.5/10
Cotton Crown follows The Tubs’ debut album, Dead Meat, building on their excellent beginning. Lead vocalist Owen ‘O’ Williams was previously a member of Gruesome Williams. He also released an album with Ex-Vöid in 2025.
Williams lists his influences as Richard and Linda Thompson, The Jam, The 1975, and Felt’s Maurice Deebank, so it’s unsurprising that I like his band’s music. Williams sings like a more vocally agile Richard Thompson.
Cotton Crown is another tight, thoroughly enjoyable record. The best line comes from ‘Fair Enough’ – “when it all just falls apart/you can blame it on my putrid heart.” ‘Chain Reaction’ is fast-paced and hooky, while the calmer, jangly ‘Narcissist’ is another highlight.
The album cover shows Williams with his mother, folk singer and music journalist Charlotte Greig. Greig committed suicide in 2014, and the closing ‘Strange’ is about her. It’s a jarring change in pace after eight tracks of quirky romantic self-analysis. Williams sings:
At the wake, someone took my arm
The Tubs, Strange
Said that you could write a song
To honour your mum
Said the band could write a song
A song about this
Well whoever the hell you are
I’m sorry
I guess this is it
Cotton Crown is an excellent second record from The Tubs, defying the power-pop sophomore slump.
FKA Twigs
Eusexua
2022, 5.5/10
FKA Twigs was born in Gloucestershire to a Jamaican father and English/Spanish mother. For some reason, I continue to review her new records, even though I’m ambivalent about her. Eusexua has a couple of worthy tracks, but as a natural prude, I struggle with her lyrics about sex and submission. It’s an awkward fit for her wispy art-pop, floating rather than earthy. It was inspired by the club music in Prague, where she filmed the flop movie The Crow.
I’m obsessed with alternative cultures and subcultures, so to be somewhere brand new that I’d never been, that kind of amazing East Bloc techno warehouse raves, techno kids, I just couldn’t resist.
FKA Twigs, Jimmy Kimmel Live
Twigs told British Vogue that she coined the word eusexua to mean a “sensation of being so euphoric” that one could “transcend human form”. Some of Eusexua works. The experimental ‘Drums of Death’ is built around a hypnotic drum groove. ‘Wanderlust’ is a conventional closer, but it’s a fine pop tune. But other material is embarrassing, like ’24Hr Dog’ and ‘Perfect Stranger’. The lowlight is the Charli XCX ripoff ‘Childlike Things’, with North West (daughter of Kanye) on guest vocals.
The esoteric erotica of Eusexua doesn’t connect for me, despite a couple of worthy tracks.
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The Tubs were instant love when I heard music off their latest album, which is why I also included them in a new music review at the time “Cotton Crown” came out. FKA Twigs isn’t my cup of tea.
I’m more impressed with the Tubs, the other really isn’t me.
Yeah, I think I’m probably the blogging community’s biggest FKA Twigs fan, and I’m lukewarm.
I like The Tubs a lot…I remember them from Christian’s site. I like their power pop sound….his voice really grew on me as well after more listens to their other music.
Yeah, first Tubs album was good, and this one’s even better I think.