Welsh rockers
the Bug Club split their fourth album,
Very Human Features, fairly evenly between experimenting with wild sounds and reframing rock & roll basics. The band grew out of high school friendships, and they kicked into high gear once they started releasing their music in 2021. Since then, they've moved quickly through modes of garage rock blasting, short-and-sweet punk outbursts, and tuneful
Kinks-informed pop tunes, releasing a new full-length album at least once a year and touring nonstop.
Very Human Features captures
the Bug Club settling into their vision, one of a band who can switch directions on a dime and still keep a consistent thread going when the songs start going to weird places. The record begins (somewhat deceptively) with a short bit of electric guitar running through some reflective blues riffing before the band explodes into "Full Grown Man." As there have been on earlier albums, this track includes hints of 2000s indie rock influence.
Sam Willmett's vocals sound like
Ray Davies borrowed the mic
Julian Casablancas used for the first two
Strokes albums, and the song's structure shifts dynamically from segments of overdriven, crashing drums and shouty dual vocals to minimal quiet parts. It's one of many tunes on
Very Human Features where the group conveys both urgency and restraint. "Jealous Boy" has a similar approach with far hookier results, moving quickly from melodic falsetto verses to seething, anthem-like choruses. It's an instantly exciting and memorable track, simple and effective in the tradition of all the great garage pop that came before it, and over in two minutes and 40 seconds. There are abrupt left turns like "Muck," a demented space-age acoustic detour that sounds like a
Man Who Sold the World-era
Bowie outtake, and "Living in the Future," a song that zigzags between its multiple parts almost quicker than they can happen, evoking
Devo one second and
Sparks the next.
The Bug Club do a great job of catching their breath between their more outlandish songs, always returning to straightforward rockers like "Blame Me" or the more complexly arranged but just as immediate album standout "Beep Boop Computers."
Very Human Features gets more involved and goes to different places than previous albums from
the Bug Club, but it drives its songs home by keeping energy in the forefront. ~ Fred Thomas
