Name: The Bug Club with Golomb
Start: 2026-06-29T19:30:00-04:00
Location: SPACE

The Bug Club with Golomb

SPACE is a nonprofit organization that supports contemporary arts projects, champions artists, and encourages an open exchange of ideas. Proudly staying curious in Portland, Maine.

SPACE

The UK rock duo Bug Club make their SPACE debut on the heels of their fifth album, Every Single Muscle, out via Sub Pop.

The Bug Club

Golomb

The Bug Club are back with a new album. It’s been a whole eleven months since their last. Where have they been?Every Single Muscle, the band’s fifth LP, arrives May 29th, 2026 via Sub Pop, making it a hat-trick for the Welsh duo and their esteemed Seattle-based patrons. Since Very Human Features, which emerged in June of 2025, the non-stop tour has seen the BBC 6 Music and KEXP favourites ping-pong across the Atlantic like they used to the Severn Bridge. Various festival slots in the summer kept them from having any sort of holiday - who needs one when you live in Wales anyway? - until it was time to head back to the writing room.So that answers that first question. Not that you’d have otherwise known. Ever self-effacing, songwriters Sam (guitar, vocals) and Tilly (bass, vocals) go as far as to claim that they’ve been sitting around “doing nothing at all” during track “It’s Our Manager David.” That’s clearly a lie. Every Single Muscle gets off to a full-throttle, chugging start with “Miss Wales 2012,” referencing a competition both Tilly and Sam have actually won. Dead serious. It’s the first of many sub-two-minute tracks on the album, setting the tone for The Bug Club’s punkiest offering yet and recalling both the short, sharp snaps of their very first singles and the grunt of recent releases. So packed is the album with wall-to-wall riffs and lyrical hooks rammed into tight confines that Sam actually asks permission to squeeze in a solo during second track “A Good Day for Dying.” He’s given two seconds.Not that we’re short-changed, though, because Sam asks again later on and is granted more. Across eighteen tunes there’s enough classic Sam/Tilly guitar interplay to satisfy even the most vociferous Bug Club club member and firmly refute the band’s own claim that they are only “just about technically proficient on our instruments.” “Full Range of Motion” has a choppy rhythm that sits atop drummer Tom’s tight beat and serves to remind us all of Minutemen, for a minute. “Make It Count” brings sweet melody and call and response, while “All My Clothes Fell Off” allows for a slower paced ballad that builds to a crescendo that would not be out of place in the world of classic rock. “Cut to Black” combines a Sparks-esque falsetto and Tilly’s melodic bass playing with a rhythm something close-ish to what Klaus Dinger used to do for Neu! And closer “My Uncle Warren Drives a Passat” sees them doing a bit of a left turn and swapping out guitars for keys. This record’s an exercise in efficient maximalism - the musical equivalent of your dad packing the car for a holiday. Bring what you like; space is tight but they’ll get it in there somehow.On to the words, because with these guys those are important. While Very Human Featuresdid an excellent job of pointing at everyday things and highlighting their absurdity, on Every Single Muscle The Bug Club look more closely at themselves. Not so much in an introspective way, though. More in a way an alien might probe a captive specimen on an intergalactic gurney. Horror movies get their “body” subgenre, now garage rock albums get theirs too. Self-interested in an entirely new sense of the term, the human form and condition is prodded and inspected from every angle throughout the course of the album. “Look Like Me” sees them singing about their own appearance, while on “How Can We Be Friends” they are preoccupied with others’. “Every Single Muscle” itemises organs as if they belong on a shopping list, and both “Make It Count” and “Pretty as a Magazine” bemoan the fact people don’t know what to do with their own bodies. Altogether, we get a sense of surreal detachment from the self that sets up the ever-present ennui-laden humour; the last song sees Sam announce he’s “bored of being human.” The Bug Club seem almost suspicious of the concept of being a person - as if they’ve woken up in a costume they didn’t want to put on and cannot take off.Initially comprising the songwriting core of Sam Willmett (vocals/guitar) and Tilly Harris (vocals/bass) with Dan Matthew (drums), The Bug Club started plying their trade in 2016. They were signed by UK label Bingo Records in Autumn 2020 and first single “We Don’t Need Room for Lovin” was released in February 2021, followed by EP Launching Moondream One. 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.Pure Particles followed, 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. The following January they decided to pull their fingers out, get some disguises and support themselves on tour as Mr Anyway’s Holey Spirits. A live album documented this, then they got abstract with titles and put out the picture disc Picture This! By the autumn of 2023 it was time for forty-seven track, poetry-infused double album Rare Birds: Hour of Song.During a trip to America they caught the eye of Sub Pop, just in time to get them on board to serve up a beefy slab of garage-punk on On the Inner Workings of the System, gaining an appropriately beefed-up stateside following in the process. The partnership proved fruitful, and with Sup Pop firmly in The Bug Club club they got cracking on Very Human Features. Is three the magic number? Probably not. But Every Single Muscle — number three for The Bug Club and Sub Pop — certainly comes close enough to convince your average strange human person that it might be.___Molded in the fertile rock crescent of Columbus, Ohio, three-piece Golomb channels Midwest friction into an album that seeks to find a genuine connection. The band boasts not one, but two bonded dynamics, something of an aberration among most trios. Siblings Xenia (bass) and Hawken (drums) tie down the rhythm section with songwriter/guitarist Mickey Shuman and Xenia turning their tags to spouse after years of dating. The close bonds between the members have fed into the band’s process — family and friends first and band second, leveraging years of trust to turn The Beat Goes On into an album that never wavers in its sincerity. An early recording session with engineer Keith Hanlon for their EP Love expands as the band returns to record the new album with him at Musicol and Secret Sound with a bigger, bolder dynamic that captures the band’s live energy to tape. Not only the sound, but the studio itself was fuller this time, with embellishments from Henry Ross and Bob Starker on Sax, David Holm and Austin Wyckoff on guitar, and Abi Gray adding violin.Stripping away artifice, Golomb takes an omnivorous approach to the solid and staid structures of rock in 2025. The band admittedly sets their compass on the classic magnetism of The Stones, letting Mick n’ the boys’ chameleonic nature feed their own urge to not be pinned down by genre expectations. Emerging from the 8-track turbulence of their debut, they slip from psych scorch to power pop with stops through dub and country along the way. Now, on first listen to the band’s sophomore LP, visions of UK rock godfathers might not spring to mind, but much like a quartet from Queens once penned their own ‘teenage symphonies to God’ and found punk in the process, Golomb have a way of fusing the past in unexpected ways with impressive results.In search of rock’s lost chords, the band smelts the sounds on their stereo into a fuzz-lapped long player that’s bound to bring forth a few ‘90s nods from listeners. The underlying buzz on “Real Power” dips a few miles south of Columbus to channel Dayton’s favorite sons, stitching together some clear-eyed clamor from the GBV playbook. The band lays it bare on “Dog” with a slow slink that builds toward the singed elegance of Spiritualized and a lyrical labyrinth that’s cut and pasted into a Burroughs-esque blur of rock motifs. The song peaks in pure maelstrom with a glorious glut of feedback foaming out of the speakers. The familiar specter of The Velvets rears its head in the shambolic beat of the title track, and “Other Side Of The Earth” gets gooey with dub, but never loses the band’s ability to feed the fray. Then, they wind guitar around their rhythms with the grace of early Built To Spill on “Be Here Now.” The sax twirls of Henry Ross send the song into the ether before scrounging up a few “Wild Horses” on the fatalistic closer “Sweet Release (Ain’t No Devil).”The album finds the band bounding through bluster like Loop one minute and hunkered down like Pixies pummeling pop’s soft spots at Fort Apache the next. The voracious volume of influences can be chalked up to an eclectic atmosphere for music in the Holm household, an environment that proved welcoming to Mickey as he was brought into the fold, and eventually the family. The album is ultimately about connection; a lifeline from the constant flicker of distractions, horrors, hubris, and duplicity that permeate everyday interactions in modern life. The band knows they may not have all the answers, but there’s little that can’t be solved with a hit, a hi-hat, and a riff that grabs you by the shoulders and shakes.___Molded in the fertile rock crescent of Columbus, Ohio, three-piece Golomb channels Midwest friction into an album that seeks to find a genuine connection. The band boasts not one, but two bonded dynamics, something of an aberration among most trios. Siblings Xenia (bass) and Hawken (drums) tie down the rhythm section with songwriter/guitarist Mickey Shuman and Xenia turning their tags to spouse after years of dating. The close bonds between the members have fed into the band’s process — family and friends first and band second, leveraging years of trust to turn The Beat Goes On into an album that never wavers in its sincerity. An early recording session with engineer Keith Hanlon for their EP Love expands as the band returns to record the new album with him at Musicol and Secret Sound with a bigger, bolder dynamic that captures the band’s live energy to tape. Not only the sound, but the studio itself was fuller this time, with embellishments from Henry Ross and Bob Starker on Sax, David Holm and Austin Wyckoff on guitar, and Abi Gray adding violin.Stripping away artifice, Golomb takes an omnivorous approach to the solid and staid structures of rock in 2025. The band admittedly sets their compass on the classic magnetism of The Stones, letting Mick n’ the boys’ chameleonic nature feed their own urge to not be pinned down by genre expectations. Emerging from the 8-track turbulence of their debut, they slip from psych scorch to power pop with stops through dub and country along the way. Now, on first listen to the band’s sophomore LP, visions of UK rock godfathers might not spring to mind, but much like a quartet from Queens once penned their own ‘teenage symphonies to God’ and found punk in the process, Golomb have a way of fusing the past in unexpected ways with impressive results.In search of rock’s lost chords, the band smelts the sounds on their stereo into a fuzz-lapped long player that’s bound to bring forth a few ‘90s nods from listeners. The underlying buzz on “Real Power” dips a few miles south of Columbus to channel Dayton’s favorite sons, stitching together some clear-eyed clamor from the GBV playbook. The band lays it bare on “Dog” with a slow slink that builds toward the singed elegance of Spiritualized and a lyrical labyrinth that’s cut and pasted into a Burroughs-esque blur of rock motifs. The song peaks in pure maelstrom with a glorious glut of feedback foaming out of the speakers. The familiar specter of The Velvets rears its head in the shambolic beat of the title track, and “Other Side Of The Earth” gets gooey with dub, but never loses the band’s ability to feed the fray. Then, they wind guitar around their rhythms with the grace of early Built To Spill on “Be Here Now.” The sax twirls of Henry Ross send the song into the ether before scrounging up a few “Wild Horses” on the fatalistic closer “Sweet Release (Ain’t No Devil).”The album finds the band bounding through bluster like Loop one minute and hunkered down like Pixies pummeling pop’s soft spots at Fort Apache the next. The voracious volume of influences can be chalked up to an eclectic atmosphere for music in the Holm household, an environment that proved welcoming to Mickey as he was brought into the fold, and eventually the family. The album is ultimately about connection; a lifeline from the constant flicker of distractions, horrors, hubris, and duplicity that permeate everyday interactions in modern life. The band knows they may not have all the answers, but there’s little that can’t be solved with a hit, a hi-hat, and a riff that grabs you by the shoulders and shakes.

Our {communityGuidelinesLink} describe the sort of content we prohibit on Eventbrite. If you suspect an event may be in violation, you can report it to us so we can investigate.

To report other categories of prohibited or illegal content, submit {link}

The Bug Club with Golomb

More events from SPACE

Discover more events from SPACE, from Music to other experiences you might love.

The Bug Club with Golomb

More events from SPACE

Discover more events from SPACE, from Music to other experiences you might love.

You might also like...

Browse more events with different dates, prices, and formats to find your next great experience.