"Last night / I thought I could smell / Melancholy / For the first time / At least in a while..."
The big synth memories and emotional synesthesia of "All At Once" by London based emo folk / baroque-pop / indie rock four piece Tugboat Captain, runs on a cool progression that (to me) grabs me and pulls me in right away. Sonically rich, kind of tubular as if the synth is running it's sound through, well, metal tubes. I also feel like Alexander (Sox) Sokolow's singing, combined with the shouty background vox and overall atmosphere feels, dare I say, or, wait (I am changing course here), the atmosphere causes me to think of Death Cab and I never noticed this about TC before, or, again, it can just be my perception or this track in particular. I mean, "All At Once", could have been on 2001's "The Photo Album", right between Coney Island and Debate Exposes Doubt.
Anyway, I am digging "All At Once" in a big way. At first I felt like it is too short but that is nitpicking.
LINER NOTES (excerpted / bracketed):
[At first listen, All At Once might present itself as a breakup record, its language steeped in separation. But to reduce it to heartbreak would be missing its core. The songs display not only
a single fracture but the accumulation of small, destabilising changes, the quiet erosion of certainty and the slippage of identity.
The band’s sound has become inseparable from Ctrl P, the South London studio run by frontman Sox and bassist Joshua Cobb. Once simply a base of operations, Ctrl P has now become the band’s defining instrument. With All At Once, Sox and Joshua fully step into their roles as producers, abandoning any attachment to live translation in favour of total studio immersion. The result is a record that could only exist in this space, shaped as much by process
as by performance. It also marks a decisive shift in the sonic palette. Where Dog Tale leaned into organic textures and the feel of live performance, All At Once is built from analogue synths,
saturated tones, and heavily processed drums. The warmth of the previous record is replaced with something more unstable and textural, sounds that smear, repeat, and dissolve, reinforcing
the album’s sense of dislocation.]
"All At Once" is the title track of Tugboat Captain's 5th full length album that dropped on July 17th of this year (2026).
Anyway, I am digging "All At Once" in a big way. At first I felt like it is too short but that is nitpicking.
LINER NOTES (excerpted / bracketed):
[At first listen, All At Once might present itself as a breakup record, its language steeped in separation. But to reduce it to heartbreak would be missing its core. The songs display not only
a single fracture but the accumulation of small, destabilising changes, the quiet erosion of certainty and the slippage of identity.
The band’s sound has become inseparable from Ctrl P, the South London studio run by frontman Sox and bassist Joshua Cobb. Once simply a base of operations, Ctrl P has now become the band’s defining instrument. With All At Once, Sox and Joshua fully step into their roles as producers, abandoning any attachment to live translation in favour of total studio immersion. The result is a record that could only exist in this space, shaped as much by process
as by performance. It also marks a decisive shift in the sonic palette. Where Dog Tale leaned into organic textures and the feel of live performance, All At Once is built from analogue synths,
saturated tones, and heavily processed drums. The warmth of the previous record is replaced with something more unstable and textural, sounds that smear, repeat, and dissolve, reinforcing
the album’s sense of dislocation.]
"All At Once" is the title track of Tugboat Captain's 5th full length album that dropped on July 17th of this year (2026).
-Robb Donker Curtius
The Chicken Wheel will take you to the AP Go Fund Me- and any amount is so appreciated!
https://tugboatcaptain.bandcamp.com/album/all-at-once
https://www.instagram.com/tugboat_captain/
https://www.facebook.com/TheTugboatCaptain/
South London DIY mainstays Tugboat Captain have spent the past nine years steadily evolving, from humble lo-fi beginnings from bombastic baroque-pop to a warmer, more intimate sense of domesticity. Ever restless, they now re-emerge with All At Once, a sprawling, technicolour, and volatile new album.
Formed nearly a decade ago in a London student house, the band began as a loose-knit group of friends and family, piecing together a dark yet charming collection of scratchy lo-fi songs. Their debut, The Tugboat Captain, balanced melancholy with an abundance of buried hooks and melody. From that original lineup, only frontman Sox and bassist Joshua Cobb remain.
Together they now run Ctrl P, the recording studio that has become both the band’s headquarters and creative anchor. Their sound has steadily evolved over time, from the jangling, living room recordings of 2017’s
Everybody Seems To Think That I’m A Raincloud to the more musically ambitious,lockdown-shaped Rut (2021), recorded during downtime at Abbey Road. Throughout, Tugboat Captain have maintained a distinctly hands-on approach. Across the catalogue there is a strongcommunal energy: a revolving cast of collaborators dropping in to contribute parts on a wide array of instruments, forming a ragtag living-room orchestra central to the band’s identity. Combined with Sox’s instinct for sharp pop hooks, this has earned them the enduring “baroque-pop” tag.
In 2025, the band returned with Dog Tale, which was their most cohesive and fully realized record to date. Written and recorded in just one week in August 2024, it marked the first album fully produced at Ctrl P, showcasing Sox and Josh’s growing technical confidence and the studio’s ethos of spontaneity and creative freedom. A rough-hewn yet tender song cycle about love, home, and dogs, Dog Tale felt like the record Tugboat Captain had always been building towards.
Following extensive touring, the band quickly returned to the studio, this time with two weeks set aside to create its follow-up, All At Once. Now solidified as a five-piece, Sox (vocals, guitar), Josh (bass), Georgia Mancey (drums), Sophia Bartlett (violin), and Dougal James (keys), they set out to make something more expansive, emotionally charged, and anxious in tone. In many
ways, All At Once feels like the inverse of Dog Tale, set in the same world but coloured by a darker, more unsettled emotional palette.
The result is a band fully embedded in their studio practice, locked in, instinctive, and pushing at their own boundaries. Sweeping strings give way to jagged synths as Sox tumbles from one moment of chaos to the next. It’s an album about disintegration and liminality, reflected as much in its lyrics as in its tightly wound, restless arrangements. From the off-kilter drift of “Us & The Moon” to the sweeping heartbreak of “Reliance” and the sharply shifting grooves of the title track, All At Once is Tugboat Captain’s most sonically distinctive and expansive work to date and at the same time, the one that feels most unmistakably their own.
The Chicken Wheel will take you to the AP Go Fund Me- and any amount is so appreciated!
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://tugboatcaptain.bandcamp.com/album/all-at-once
https://www.instagram.com/tugboat_captain/
https://www.facebook.com/TheTugboatCaptain/
South London DIY mainstays Tugboat Captain have spent the past nine years steadily evolving, from humble lo-fi beginnings from bombastic baroque-pop to a warmer, more intimate sense of domesticity. Ever restless, they now re-emerge with All At Once, a sprawling, technicolour, and volatile new album.
Formed nearly a decade ago in a London student house, the band began as a loose-knit group of friends and family, piecing together a dark yet charming collection of scratchy lo-fi songs. Their debut, The Tugboat Captain, balanced melancholy with an abundance of buried hooks and melody. From that original lineup, only frontman Sox and bassist Joshua Cobb remain.
Together they now run Ctrl P, the recording studio that has become both the band’s headquarters and creative anchor. Their sound has steadily evolved over time, from the jangling, living room recordings of 2017’s
Everybody Seems To Think That I’m A Raincloud to the more musically ambitious,lockdown-shaped Rut (2021), recorded during downtime at Abbey Road. Throughout, Tugboat Captain have maintained a distinctly hands-on approach. Across the catalogue there is a strongcommunal energy: a revolving cast of collaborators dropping in to contribute parts on a wide array of instruments, forming a ragtag living-room orchestra central to the band’s identity. Combined with Sox’s instinct for sharp pop hooks, this has earned them the enduring “baroque-pop” tag.
In 2025, the band returned with Dog Tale, which was their most cohesive and fully realized record to date. Written and recorded in just one week in August 2024, it marked the first album fully produced at Ctrl P, showcasing Sox and Josh’s growing technical confidence and the studio’s ethos of spontaneity and creative freedom. A rough-hewn yet tender song cycle about love, home, and dogs, Dog Tale felt like the record Tugboat Captain had always been building towards.
Following extensive touring, the band quickly returned to the studio, this time with two weeks set aside to create its follow-up, All At Once. Now solidified as a five-piece, Sox (vocals, guitar), Josh (bass), Georgia Mancey (drums), Sophia Bartlett (violin), and Dougal James (keys), they set out to make something more expansive, emotionally charged, and anxious in tone. In many
ways, All At Once feels like the inverse of Dog Tale, set in the same world but coloured by a darker, more unsettled emotional palette.
The result is a band fully embedded in their studio practice, locked in, instinctive, and pushing at their own boundaries. Sweeping strings give way to jagged synths as Sox tumbles from one moment of chaos to the next. It’s an album about disintegration and liminality, reflected as much in its lyrics as in its tightly wound, restless arrangements. From the off-kilter drift of “Us & The Moon” to the sweeping heartbreak of “Reliance” and the sharply shifting grooves of the title track, All At Once is Tugboat Captain’s most sonically distinctive and expansive work to date and at the same time, the one that feels most unmistakably their own.
Tugboat Captain, folk, baroque pop, indie rock, folk indie, storytelling, embracing music, communal music, DIY London band, Alexander Sokolow, rustic, pub and porch folk, "Reliance", new album "All At Once",
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