As they embark on a UK tour, the band’s frontman recounts how terrible dates, struggles with OCD and a family tragedy all fed into their new record

‘Most of the songs were written in the midst of a breakdown,” says Owen Williams, lead singer with indie rock group the Tubs. “My long-term relationship had ended, so I was drunk constantly and being kind of obsessive about the people I was dating.”

Williams doesn’t really need to tell me that he was in a difficult place while writing his band’s second album, Cotton Crown – the evidence is in the lyrics. Tubs songs might jangle deceptively with intricate riffs and Teenage Fanclub-style harmonies, but the words are loaded with self-laceration. Manipulative, irritating, sycophantic, unreliable: these are just some of the ways Williams portrays himself on record.