The Bug Club

The way you’re saying it, “prolific” isn’t the right word for The Bug Club. You’ve got to say it with the trademark Welsh lilt and pay due homage to this inimitable band’s origins in the renowned hit factory of Caldicot, South Wales. Do that, and you’re about right with how to summarize a group who’ve released ten singles, two albums, two EPs, three things nobody knew how to describe, and an album under a different band’s name, all since 2021, and while playing 200+ gigs a year.

The Bug Club is Tilly Harris (Bass, Vocals) and Sam Willmett (Vocals, Guitar). Their first offering for the label is “Quality Pints,” a track that deals with the pressing concerns of any conscientious touring outfit, taking to heart the rule of the three R’s as penned by renowned fellow pints fan Mark E Smith of The Fall: repetition, repetition, repetition. If it’s that important, which it is, it’s worth saying again.

Initially comprising the songwriting core of Willmett and Harris with Dan Matthew on drums, The Bug Club started plying their trade in 2016. They were signed by UK label Bingo Records in Autumn of 2020, and their first single, “We Don’t Need Room For Lovin’,” was released in February 2021. It quickly established The Bug Club as the tongue-in-cheek and live-focused antidote to the previous year’s penned-in pandemic drudgery.  BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley was an early champion, hammering the single, booking the band in for a session as soon as it was allowed, and rightfully praising songwriters capable of singing the whole alphabet in a two-minute song and making it work.

EP Launching Moondream One came next, complete with 7”, comic book, and free jingles (radio stabs are something of a forte for the band), followed by Pure Particles, whose vinyl release included a board game brimming with cult references. Fed up with the conventional approach, they then released “Intelectuals”: a standalone track that was actually a five-track ‘song suite’ like some kind of streaming-model-snubbing, Telecaster-bashing answer to Bach. Highbrow musos took a lyrical beating for the ages. Second standalone release, “Two Beauties,” marked release number two for 2022 and built up to the appearance of debut album Green Dream in F# by October. Lead single “‘It’s Art” encapsulated The Bug Club’s ethos good and proper: they’re only in this for fun, “you’re not supposed to feel it.” But they’re self-effacing because everybody does feel it. And it feels great.