4 out of 5

Label: self-released

Produced by: Mason Perrett (engineered by)

…And then another bundle of years passed, and Tub Ring dropped a new album.

As a listener / supporter since Drake Equation – I’m not cool, I just got lucky and got a promo of this when I worked at Tower Records – I’ve had feelings about every Tub Ring album along the way. The band has grown and grown, and maybe not always in ways I “wanted,” but in ways that have felt right for what the band wanted to do and be at those points; there’s a sense of integrity behind every TR release that has kept all of them in my listening rotation, each serving a kind of distinct purpose. That said, big ol’ stinkin’ fan that I am, I got bummed when they seemed to go digital only with A Choice of Catastrophes, and especially when I couldn’t track down a way to buy it outside of Amazon or Apple; I just wanted something that felt more “mine,” and those services skeeve me out a bit, for no necessarily legitimate reason. I’m also not on Facebook, which is apparently the way TR communicate; shame on me, as I missed the announcement of Last and First Men at the time.

This might’ve been a good thing overall, as I can see myself souring on this at first pass. Instead, I ended up bundling my listen with finally diving in to Catastrophes (see that linked review), which encouraged a relisten of their whole catalogue, and that really helped to flavor LaFM.

The souring is because there’s another evolution here, inevitably, and it’s one that can initially seem like the group is trying a bit too hard: to be weird; to be modern; and to sound like Tub Ring. After a pretty Soundcloud-y / Tik Tok-y opener (very singalong; lots of lush instrumentation; very digitally produced), the album cycles through a handful of tracks that really seem like a summary of the various punk and polka and operatic rock stuff the group has always done. It was, for me, the first time the project sounded a little tired, although that opener covered a lot of positive ground: the leaning in-to more modern pastiche blended with Tub Ring’s weird-pop style could be an intriguing proposition for an album, but backing it up with the retreads underminded the uniqueness a bit.

But: once we’re out of that section of the album with “Spread,” it becomes easier to spot how narrative influences the album’s structure; a story of leaving one planet and discovering another – shot through with social and political commentary about man’s cyclical behaviors of destruction – somewhat splits the songs between the old and the new. “Spread” is the transition point, where the group moves forward on what the kickoff song established by going full-on performative skronk, fulfilling the Foetus / J.G. Thirwell dreams that’d started to crystallize more on Catastrophes; here, TR find a way to make the skronk their own, while bringing in the over-produced glow-up of the modern age of music. It’s brilliantly catchy stuff, very theatrical while slinging around oddball ideas (lyrically and musically) that are rejiggered into instantly memorable pop tunes. When you stand back from this format, the run of tracks which are a bit more “generic” open up: these introduce bits and pieces of the new style as background elements to expected Tub Ring sounds, aligning with the way the lyrics nudge and then shove their populace onto their new home, then spread out like a bruise – the way the latter half subsumes modern trends into the template of a TR song.

As always, very possible I’m making this all up, but this read makes this one of the most comprehensive, front-to-back, albums the band has put out, without sacrificing the hardcore and punk and pop elements that are always present in their sound. I do think I would prefer meatier production over the rather flattened, shiny, digital sound, but maybe we can save that for when I write the group in 20 years and demand remasters of all this stuff.

Also, as a big ol’ asterisk: I listened to this on vinyl and on digital, and the “full” picture of the experience is somewhere spread across the two. The vinyl does not have the whole narrative – missing some concluding elements to the story – but does take us up through Arrival and some subsequent chaos. Plus, the digital, while having some great tracks which do “conclude” the story better, also have some other tunes in the middle which fuss with my overall explanation of the old / new structure. They are good tracks, but kind of fit with the “standard” style. The vinyl also has a re-do of Friends and Enemies from The Great Filter; I’m choosing to view that as a bonus track, as it really doesn’t fit in with the story. (Both the original and re-do are amazing songs, though!)