Some of you have probably seen on our socials that we’re releasing another album later this year! London’s Tugboat Captain caught our attention when they played our local, much beloved venue, the Glad Cafe in April 2019. Recorded last year in Abbey Road studios (yes THAT Abbey Road), Rut brings an expansion of the band’s sound from previous bedroom efforts to a new plateau, but enough about that. You’ll get to hear it soon enough. You can listen to the aptly titled lead single No Plans (For This Year) on all your favourite streaming websites now:
Recently, we caught up with Alex to discuss the new album and the reality of life in lockdown, including a cut short US tour.
How has lockdown been treating you? Was it easy for you to adjust to?
Hi Double A-Side, lockdown’s been pretty weird for all of us. We were forced to turnaround midway through a string of US shows and instead of flying out from New York to SXSW in Austin we ended up flying home straight into lockdown. It skewed a lot of our plans for this year (see what I did there…) so we’ve just been figuring out how to go about being a band whilst being unable to do all the things that make a band a band.
What can we expect from the new album?
You can expect 35 minutes of pure unadulterated guitar-pop. We’ve thrown every cliché and every hands-in-the-air moment into this set of songs. It’s our first full-length release recorded in an actual real recording studio (not our living room with a mic inside a shoe) so it should also bring to light some of the musical aspects that have previously been hidden in the murk. Otherwise its your first opportunity to hear our incredible new drummer, Georgia Mancey, beat the tubs on record.
What show/films/books have been keeping you sane throughout this time?
A pretty mixed bag really. I ordered a bunch of zines from Back Of The Gig and Secret Meeting which are both super fun and I’ve also been reading Gold Flake Paint. I’ve been trying to watch all the rock docs I’ve never really had the chance to watch and I strongly recommend Dig! which is about the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre. In between these things I’ve rediscovered some old video games and have been committing a little too much time to Runescape and some of the old Total War games. Also, watch The Last Kingdom because it’s awesome and better than Vikings.
Any music recommendations you discovered or revisited recently?
One of my activities has been to try and listen to every record I own which has been fun. Favourite revisits have been from The BV’s and Adults. I’ve also been listening to the new Savage Mansion record a load, too! Lots of friends have managed to keep putting out music during lockdown so I’ve made a little playlist of pals releasing singles.
Any lockdown recipes you’d like to share?
I’ve been pretty skint and lazy a lot of lockdown so have been eating a lot of pancakes. Pancakes are cheap.
Rut is out on October 25th on vinyl and digitally, and you can pre-order a copy now!
Double A-Side Records 