"to blunder through the biggest conversation / I'll get over it / to wonder if you have an explanation / I'll get over it..."
The passionate shouts, tears and sonic bear hugs of "Reliance", by London based emo folk / baroque-pop / indie rock four piece Tugboat Captain, is an exercise in deep storytelling, so deep that after each repeated listen you will read more between every line and feel like you have seen an indie movie full of human pain and resolve without one damn guy in a cape. My feelings I am typed down will make the seventh time I have written about this uniquely artistic band and every time I am reminded that they make more than just songs but sonic dioramas about the human condition. This time the story is set against somber, yet jaunty synths that along with pounding drums and drums that punch you in the gut as a potent framework for Alexander (Sox) Sokolow's vocal countenance drenched in melancholy defiance and maybe even emotional flagellation.
Besides the core songwriting here, the strength of the emotional world building is a testament to beautiful musical orchestrations and a massive potency of walls of voices seemingly shouting from balconies, from rooftops courtesy of the Ctrl P Community Choir (see Liner Notes) that definitely adds to the heaviness of the song.
LINER NOTES (excerpted / bracketed):
[Tugboat Captain return with “Reliance”, a seven-minute epic that traces the full collapse of a relationship, blow by blow and verse by verse, until nothing remains but the closing question: Reliance, is that all it is? It is the band at their most bold and unsparing, a communal outpouring of pain that moves from stumbling, visceral grief toward something cathartic and hard-won.
The track opens with deceptive simplicity, driven by repetitive bouncing analogue synths, before expanding into something far larger. Sophia Bartlett’s violin surges across a vast string arrangement as Dougal James’s synth pulses throughout, locked together by the rhythmic partnership of Joshua Cobb and Georgia Mancey. The Ctrl P Community Choir, a collective of friends and collaborators who gathered on the final day of recording, lend their voices to an arrangement that swells outward, reaching for resolution in the wreckage.
“Reliance carries the weight of the record,” says Sox. “All the raw emotional intensity comes to a peak. It’s a song about pain, loss and change.” Written and recorded in an intense two-week session at Ctrl P immediately after touring Dog Tale, All At Once (out July 17th) is the sound of a band pushing themselves to the brink.]
-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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