Every Single Muscle

Description

The Bug Club is back with a new album. Seven months have passed since the last one. Where have they been? Every Single Muscle, their fifth album, is the third to be released on Sub Pop, the Seattle label that actively supports them. Since the release of Very Human Features in June 2025, the darlings of BBC 6 Music and KEXP have been making constant transatlantic trips. Summer festivals have forced them not to take a vacation (and who needs one when you live in Wales?) before returning to the studio. A studio probably still located in their bedroom in Caldicott, frequented by their greyhound Ted (listen closely, he appears in one of the songs). Still modest, the songwriters Sam (guitar, vocals) and Tilly (bass, vocals) even go so far as to claim they are lazy in "It's Our Manager David." Of course, that's a lie. Every Single Muscle kicks off with "Miss Wales 2012," a reference to a contest that Tilly and Sam actually won. It's the first of a long series of tracks under two minutes, setting the tone for The Bug Club's most punk album to date and recalling both the short, incisive titles of their early singles and the power of their recent productions. The album is so packed with riffs and catchy melodies that Sam asks for permission to insert a solo during the second track, "A Good Day For Dying." He is granted two seconds. Fortunately, Sam asks again later and gets more. Across eighteen tracks, there is enough guitar interplay between Sam and Tilly to satisfy even the most fervent Bug Club member and categorically refute the band's claim that they only "technically master their instruments." This album is an exercise in effective maximalism: the musical equivalent of your dad loading the car for vacation. Is the number three magical? Probably not. But Every Single Muscle, The Bug Club's third album on Sub Pop, comes close enough to convince the most eccentric among us that it just might be.