It’s been a good year for power pop. It’s been a shit year for… uh… everything else, but, from Montreal newcomers Prism Shores shimmering their way through sophomore album Out From Underneath to heavy space-rockers Cloakroom channeling a bit of a dystopian Gin Blossoms on their new Last Leg Of The Human Table, at least we’ve had a bright, jangly soundtrack to accompany the end of democracy as we know it (and I don’t feel fine). Speaking of which, R.E.M. — the godfathers of jangle rock themselves — reunited last week for a second time(!) at the 40 Watt in Athens, GA.

Yes, Rickenbacker-lovers everywhere are having a good 2025, and perhaps no one has contributed more to that wave than Owen “O” Williams. The London-based Welshman played a key role in two of the year’s most masterful records in the power-pop sphere. In January, Ex-Vöid, the band Williams co-fronts with his former Joanna Gruesome bandmate Lan McArdle, returned with the loud, scuzzy jangle-pop thrill ride In Love Again. Less than two months later, his other band the Tubs are back today with their fantastic sophomore record Cotton Crown, an extraordinary album born from devastating circumstances.

Ten years ago, Williams lost his mother — folk musician Charlotte Greig — to suicide. Being a writer at heart, Williams began work on a fiction novel a few years later to channel his grief into something constructive, but publishers wouldn’t touch it.

“If there was a lesson to learn,” Williams wrote on a recent Substack post, “it was that grief can be as much artistic hindrance as trump card.” The failed novel would nag at him for years; according to his post, Williams lost weight, “barely slept for months and became addicted to Xanax for a bit.”

Around the time of his despair, the Tubs’ 2023 debut Dead Meat began gathering steam, which was a bit of a shock to the band. “I was like, ‘Oh shit, people like this band,'” Williams laughs in a conversation with Stereogum. “We’d been around since 2018 and nobody gave a shit. So I was like, ‘Shit, okay, I better write another one!'” He quickly realized that maybe he could write about his mother through his music, that maybe Celtic pub-rock would make a perfect disguise for the words about her death and the grief to hide within.

On the verge of a nervous breakdown, Williams began to bash out the songs that would make up Cotton Crown (the album is named after one of Greig’s songs). It took him about a week, save for “Strange,” the most autobiographical song on the record that for years didn’t feel right. “I was in a bit of a manic month,” Williams says about the songwriting process for the album.

With the help of guitarist George Nicholls, who makes Cotton Crown sparkle with his Johnny Marr-like fretwork, Williams put all his self-conscious and nervous words to song, slipping in and out of caricatures of himself throughout. The band — which also includes Max Warren on bass and Taylor Stewart on drums — sounds tighter and more aggressive than they did on Dead Meat. These songs, like the rollicking singles “Freak Mode” and “Chain Reaction,” radiate confidence, and if you weren’t paying attention to the words, they might sound outright joyous.

But the lyrics in conjunction with the music is what makes Cotton Crown such a fascinating and rewarding listen. Below, Williams takes us track-by-track through the album and talks about the Smiths, writing, the weirdness of grief, and drinking 100 beers in one night. Press play on the album and read our conversation.

1. “The Thing Is”

Before we get into the album, I did want to ask you about the cover. I know judging an album by its cover is not a good practice, but the photo sets the tone for the record. What’s the story behind it?

OWEN “O” WILLIAMS: The original picture was from a press shot that my mother did in 1992, when I was born. She was a musician. There was a bit of Gothic folk element of her music. So, I suppose she had the idea to take a photo of her breastfeeding me in a graveyard, which is a pretty gothy concept. Then she put it on a 7″.

After she died, I was taking some of her stuff, and I took that 7″, which has been a bit of a transitionary object, taking it from flat to flat. I realized I was writing a few songs about her and the period after she died, and I was thinking about artwork. I thought it’s funny that my first press shot is on the 7″, and I thought it would be quite an interesting thing to use it on my album. It’s quite intense to have it reproduced so many times, to see it on the hundreds of vinyls in my room. It might become kind of strange to see it on the merch table.

I was going to say, it must be weird. Do you you listen to her music at all?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, sometimes, yeah. Particularly, like, my dad was involved in reissuing her first album recently. So, I listened to that quite a lot. It’s probably my favorite one.

Obviously, the subject matter on this record is a bit grim, but the music is bright and catchy. When you were writing songs for this record, did you ever find that you had to stop yourself from making the music sound too dour?

WILLIAMS: Well, I think I naturally write in major keys anyway, like pop hooks and stuff, so that tends to come a bit instinctively. I’ve always liked that combination, smuggling some misery into people’s ears [laughs]. There is a balance, though. If I’ve got a more dour-sounding song, I try to balance the lyrics in the other direction.

Tell me about “The Thing Is.” It’s a great start to the record.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, so it’s a bit of a hatchet job on myself, that one. It actually makes me out to be worse than I am. I’m sort of playing a character more on this tune. I’ve always quite liked spiteful or unlikable lyricists, and “The Thing Is” seems to be an exercise in imagining myself as more a dick than I am.

Like a Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm sort of thing?

WILLIAMS: [laughs] Exactly, yeah. I feel like a lot of lyricists use a kind of self-reflection, but it tends to be a bit more like self-deprecating but in a sad way. I wanted to react to that and write something that was a bit of a hatchet job.

2. “Freak Mode”

That’s one thing I wanted to ask about a lot of the lyrics on this record. Like in “Freak Mode,” how much of this is autobiographical versus how much of this is character-based?

WILLIAMS: It varies, yeah. “The Thing Is” is more character-based, but on “Freak Mode” that one’s drawing on a period where I had a breakup. This is about two years ago, and I was single, and it unleashed a lot of grief around my mum. I was being kind of wacky, in my promiscuous era, which is quite rare for me. And a lot of those songs came out of that, and “Freak Mode” came out of a period of delusion. You know, that feeling when you find someone who just hasn’t got anything in common with you that you just become obsessed. “Freak Mode” is just me stepping back and looking that time.

Why did it feel like the right choice to be the lead single for the record?

WILLIAMS: I think musically it seems to bring together quite a lot of the elements of the album that I thought were kind of new, keeping that kind of Hüsker Dü-style pace to everything. I use these kind of folky tunings in it, and there’s a melancholy there, which I think wasn’t quite there on the first [record], maybe? And I just thought it was a good tune [laughs].

It is, for sure. You said you were going through a breakup two years ago and it kind of stirred these emotions. Is that when you kind of started writing the songs for this record?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, they were all written in about a week, really.

Wow.

WILLIAMS: And they just they basically kind of preceded me having a bit of a breakdown. I was in a bit of a manic month. It was probably like two weeks, I just bashed out all these songs.

Just you, or do you write with the other band members as well?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, so George would help with a bit of the structures sometimes, and come up with a guitar lick, but it was mainly me in my room. It was partly because I was quite surprised that the first album was doing well. I have so many bands. It’s like horses where one starts galloping ahead and I kind of like stopped putting my effort in that one.

I was gonna say, you seem busy as hell with all the other different bands. Ex-Vöid just released In Love Again back January, which another really great record. What’s it like juggling all those band duties? Do you find it hard to find time for the Tubs?

WILLIAMS: My feeling is like none of it takes that much time, but the fucking emailing and trying to organize a tour or getting a US visa, that’s like the bane of my life right now. For me, I just write songs really quickly. I’m also a prose writer, which is real work to me. In terms of writing songs, maybe it’s because I’ve been doing it since I was a teenager, but I can just sort of write while I’m walking around or, like, bash one out in five or 10 minutes. It’s not really work to me, you know? So I find it quite easy to write like half an Ex-Vöid album and a Tubs album in a year.

Lan McArdle from Ex-Vöid also pops up a lot both on this record and Dead Meat, but they’re not an official member of the Tubs, right? Can you tell me about your collaborative relationship?

WILLIAMS: Yeah. It all gets a bit incestuous sometimes, or adulterous. Sometimes I’ll have a song and I’ll give it to Ex-Vöid, and then I’ll be like, “Actually, no, I’m taking that as a Tubs song.” So I think Lan gets a bit annoyed when they’ll come to a gig and I’ll be playing the songs that I taught them a few days ago [laughs].

But we’re all really good friends, the whole Gob Nation collective. It’s very social. We’re recording another Tubs album right now, and I was doing an interview with Lan and Ex-Vöid, and after I was like, “Oh, let’s go to the studio and you can come up with some vocal parts.” It’s kind of how enmeshed we are. But does mean it confuses people sometimes, like, “Who’s in which band?”

3. “Illusion”

The next song, “Illusion,” was on your Names EP from a couple of years ago. Why did you want to revisit this one for the new record?

WILLIAMS: I didn’t really like the way we recorded those first songs. We hadn’t really found our stride as a band, and I hadn’t really found my way of singing. I was never a confident singer, but over the last few years I’ve put more effort into it, I suppose.
It’s just annoying if you have a song that you like and you have a version that you’re unhappy with. I always think it’s a shame not to come up with the best version of the song. We have Taylor on the drums now, and he gave it much more energy. So yeah, we just tucked it in there, and I’m very happy with the new recording.

4. “Narcissist”

I was personally happy you put that on this record too. It’s been one of my early favorites of yours. However, the next one, “Narcissist,” is now probably my favorite one you’ve ever released. It feels like the most Smiths-like song in your arsenal.

WILLIAMS: I was learning to play a Red House Painters song in a particular tuning, and then sometimes when you do something like that, it leads to new chords. So I came up with that tune, and for ages it was quite a slow, dirge-y song. But then I brought it to George and we had this idea to turn it into this groovy, Smiths thing. I mean, it’s difficult with the Smiths stuff, because obviously we’re really big fans and we try to avoid going too Smiths-y, but for that song we were just, “Fuck it.”

And he had the riff, and we were like, “This is kind of Marr-level,” you know? We’ll let it happen. In terms of the lyrics, it’s one of my dating-while-grieving songs. It’s about how I went on a date with someone who identified as a sociopath, which I thought sounded like an interesting thing to happen to me. So I pursued it almost like the way you pursue a plot in a novel or something. I think it says something about my mental state at the time that I was willing to put myself in potentially quite a bad situation just because it might be interesting.

The line in the chorus, “Sick of the vibes in my room/ Sick of the flowers all in bloom/ Sick of my friends telling me all the things that I could do/ Sick of London/ Of seeing all this through” gutted me a bit. I think a lot of people when grieving, myself included, have felt this way where we’re just fucking sick of everything that used to bring us joy. Has writing this record helped you tackle your grief head on?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, it’s interesting because that chorus, I almost felt it was a bit too on-the-nose there. But it just came out that way and I was like, “Yeah, that IS it.” But I don’t really find it particularly cathartic. It just sort of comes out, you know? I’d like it if sometimes something more cheerful came out [laughs].

Normally, I try to write about grief and stuff from a sideways angle. I feel like anything that tries to deal with it too directly tends to just come across as sentimental. So, looking at grief through dating or grief being the subtext of the song was a more interesting way to me to deal with it. I can’t really say it’s given me any particular emotional catharsis. If anything, it kind of freaked me out a bit, especially on the last song, but I’ll talk about that later.

5. “Chain Reaction”

Is it true you guys drank 100 beers in one night for the music video?

WILLIAMS: [laughs] Yeah, it is. One thing about the Tubs is that we do drink a lot.

I mean, the song just sounds like a good night out.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, it was quite a fun night, because Max our bassist had been hit by a car, and he was just at the point where he was able to go back out and he was in a wheelchair. So, it was a celebratory night, because we were quite worried for a while.

How is he doing?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, he’s good. He’s walking now, which is good, but the nerves haven’t returned to his hands. So we’ve had to get a replacement bassist for our upcoming tour.

But yeah, that night was a very typical Tubs night out. I don’t go as hard as some of the others in the band. I do drink too much, probably, and for anyone who’s seen us live, that’s very much a part of my personality, for better or worse.

“Chain Reaction” and “Fair Enough” (which I’ll get to in a bit) have a similar feel to them, like something off of my favorite R.E.M. record Life’s Rich Pageant. What brings you back to that sound?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I’m not sure really. I mean, I do think the ’80s stuff – the jangle pop – is obviously there, and that comes from the love of the Smiths and R.E.M. It’s funny because some people talk about us like we’re a real just straightforward, ’80s jangle pop band. Then you get other people who review it and say like, “What a weird mix of instruments this is.” If you listen, there’s punk in there, there’s maybe a little bit of hardcore, there’s goth stuff in there, there’s the jangle pop, there’s power pop, and there’s ’90s grunge stuff. The next record we have is probably even more expansive. I suppose it comes from growing up with the Internet, having this crazy bird’s-eye view of indie rock history.

Are there any newer bands you guys have a shared affinity for?

WILLIAMS: Our favorite band at the moment is Antenna, this new band from Shogun of Royal Headache.

Oh yeah. I miss Royal Headache, but man, Antenna’s so good.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, we played with them in Australia and we’re all completely obsessed. Stuff like that tends to be the kind of stuff we all agree on. The rhythm section are more like the rockers of the band. Their favorite band is Guided By Voices. Max is also into hardcore and stuff. That’s probably more reflected on our new album, which is a bit more rock.

6. “Embarrassing”

This feels like the Tubs’ version of a love song.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I was about to say, that’s probably the closest thing to a love song we have, and that’s why it’s embarrassing [laughs]. It’s about when I first started going out with my now girlfriend and again, the kind of like crazy mind-bending delusions that texting and waiting for texts creates. I’m terrible at that sort of thing.

That song came out of being in that zone of not knowing where you stand, and then being embarrassed by your inability to keep your cool. It’s less me being the heel character and more being actually how I am. I do like to deploy a bit of sincerity at an opportune time.

7. “One More Day”

You mentioned earlier about being a more confident singer. Would you say “One More Day” is an example of that newfound confidence?

WILLIAMS: I spent a lot of time trying to sing folk songs and stuff, because I trill a lot in my voice. I feel like that is the kind of thing you can train for a bit. I also stopped smoking and vaping, which I think shows on this album. Once you get past the instinctive self-cringe of singing, you can work out where your strengths are, you know? This song is funny because there’s the end where I have to be weird and high, and there’s a lot of funny takes of me just like completely bungling that and squealing and stuff. Maybe I’ll leak them for the paid Substack subscribers [laughs].

This song also feels like the angriest you’ve sounded too.

WILLIAMS: Well, it’s kind of angry. I mean, I guess the music’s angry. It’s more like a longing kind of thing. I was kind of riffing off the song… what was it called? I think it’s also called “One More Day” by Otis Redding. There’s the simple idea that you’re begging for just one day. I wanted to create a bit of a scene around that. There’s a despair-type of anger, rather than anger at the subject. Again, it involves a pub, which pop up in a lot of our songs.

I also had to look up what a “pint of John” was.

WILLIAMS: Did you work out what it was?

John Smith’s, right?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I actually don’t like that beer, but it’s our guitarist’s favorite beer.

8. “Fair Enough”

What could you tell me about recording this song? Because it sounds like you guys did it live in this studio.

WILLIAMS: I can’t remember. We were probably a bit drunk [laughs]. But yeah, it probably would have been somewhat live, you know? It’s very much like that power pop, Guided By Voices side of our sound. Maybe I was conceding a bit to the rhythm section then. That was less of George’s influence on that because he doesn’t play on that one, and if I’m left to my own devices, I like to ramp up the power pop. I think it’s probably more reflective of our live show, which tends to be a lot faster and a lot more raucous. Whereas on something like “Narcissist” is quite a different atmosphere, you know?

Speaking of your show, you guys will be coming to North America soon, right?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, we’re touring with the Wedding Present, which will be fun. Hopefully getting our Visa goes smoothly. It was a bit unexpected. We were kind of organizing a tour anyway, and then when we got the offer so we thought, “Why not?” Then we’ll be back later in the year for a headlining tour.

9. “Strange”

Before we get into this song, I wanted to ask… you wrote in your Substack that you were writing a novel around the time of your mother’s death in order to help deal with your grief. Is that something you think you’d still like to do?

WILLIAMS: Yeah. After that one, I actually wrote another one, which I have in the bank, and when I get some time I’m gonna try to send it to some publishers. I’m more into essay writing at the moment, but yeah, I have these novels in the bank. The one I mentioned in the Substack isn’t very good, but the one I wrote after that is pretty good I think.

Is writing just something you’re always doing on the side?

WILLIAMS: Every day I try and do a few hours. I enjoy it. It’s funny, in a way, I probably put like a million more hours into that than writing music. But people prefer music, you know? [laughs]

What do you like better?

WILLIAMS: I guess I like the immediacy of writing pop songs. I like how social it is, and how collective it is in terms of playing shows. But then it’s very different from writing all day, you know? I guess you would know as well, working on something using your creative and intellectual mind at the same time. There’s problem-solving there, which can be quite addictive.

For “Strange,” it’s really interesting because you’re singing about writing the song within the song itself. Why do you think it took you so long to write a song about this subject? Why does it feel right to release one now?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, it’s weird. I guess I always thought maybe I could write a song about it. I was writing all this prose about it, but any time I put it music, it felt a bit sentimental and a bit false somehow. In this song, the only way I found I could get towards it was by looking at it at a bit of a sideways angle, thinking about how everyone acts after the fact, like the funny or clumsy awkwardness. It is quite a British thing, the way people act after something like the suicide of your mother. It was very interesting to me. I found it perversely relieving because everyone’s being crazy, and it was kind of funny. So, I just found myself writing about that.

It’s a very different kind of song that I normally write. It doesn’t really rhyme. I wasn’t thinking about hooks and stuff. I couldn’t use some of my normal tricks. There wasn’t that kind of lyrical persona either. “Strange” is probably the most upfront and biographical one. It doesn’t talk about her death head on. It’s more about the weird ways I was acting and the weird ways people were acting, and how the only thing you could say about it was it’s all quite strange.

It was quite unexpected for me to have it end up being so emotional, when I was just basically describing things in an unsentimental way, but it connected with my friends and bandmates who knew my mum. I can’t really play it live. It’s got a bit of radioactivity around it for me.

Was it hard to record?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I was a bit embarrassed by it. It seemed a bit overly exposing somehow. Usually I have this slightly affected, ironic take on everything, and I think that’s still a bit there. It was certainly a bit more revealing than I’m used to. It’s weird because I’ve always find it a bit jarring – the idea of playing it live – because our shows are so often kind of silly and rough, and the idea of just launching into that song [laughs]… it could be interesting, but it would be jarring.

It also sounds like the sunniest song on the record. It reminds me a little of the band Wishy, like a ’90s alternative sort of thing.

WILLIAMS: Oh yeah, yeah.

It’s also a great example of this juxtaposition of really sad lyrics and then a really sunny-sounding music on the record.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. Again, it was one of those ones where in the first version, the music kind of matched the tone bit more. At that point I was like, oh this just doesn’t feel right for The Tubs, and I didn’t really know what else to do with it. So, put it aside for a while. But then I had this idea that it would sound a bit like the stuff you’re talking about or maybe like the 1975 or something. I had that sort of polished pop in mind. But then, you know, I realized that the juxtaposition made it a Tubs song.

Cotton Crown is out now on Trouble In Mind.