chubby and the gang
Inside Chubby and the Gang’s Retro Evolution
If you listened to Speed Kills, Chubby and the Gang’s bloody-knuckled 2020 debut, the British hardcore bruisers’ new record should feel plenty familiar. For a while, at least. But about halfway through The Mutt’s Nuts, all those throttling guitars and volcanic drums suddenly cease as the album morphs into something more methodical, more nuanced. Retro power-pop bleeds into American doo-wop, like Elvis Costello writing for The Chantels. What’s this, has Chubby gone soft? No fucking way, says frontman Charlie “Chubby” Manning-Walker — just “three-dimensional.” “I don’t want to be a band who just has 12 tracks of 200 miles an hour,” Manning-Walker tells SPIN. “We sort of did that with Speed Kills and I don’t want to make the same record twice.” After 15 years spent grinding on the U.K. hardco...
The 30 Best Albums of 2020 (So Far)
On one hand, who can think about stuff as trivial as this? On the other, what else is there to do? If art was made to fill a cultural vacuum, well… now’s the fucking time, buddy. Hopefully, you’ve been binging every show, reading every book, repainting every bathroom you’ve been putting off. Hopefully, when (and if) we make it out of quarantine alive, we’ll be able to look forward to better things. For now, we still have music. Some of the great albums and EPs below demand your full and undivided attention. Some of them demand to intensify your workout or gaming session. Mostly they just sound good, and you should pair them with whatever activities music enhances for you. Even sleep; lord knows that could be improved upon. Others will keep you wide awake. If any of these albums make you th...
