After Bathtub’s bold track Introduction, released at the end of 2020, gave meat to the Stoke band’s demand for a new era, Brandon and Olly are quickly back on it with their second explosive studio track of their reboot as a duo.

Fallin’ Thru is a magnificent full-on hymn to hard and heavy; anyone into the likes of Royal Blood, cleopatrick and Death From Above 1979 will find their ears fair tickled by Bathtub. The track is released at the end of this week.

When the tune is all about bass, drums and voice, all 3 have to be top notch and that’s the case here. Olly and Brandon have an enviable skill to etch out a complex vibe from a few bass notes while creating more texture by deploying a complex rhythm of beats which just work.

I’ll reference Olly’s strong vocal bite too. There is such emotion in that voice, I’d never want to p1ss that guy off; this man can disarm by tone alone.

One of these days I’m going to have to ask Brandon whether it is the impressive physique he has worked up, which helps him to create that muscular powerhouse drumbeat in the Bathtub songs, or whether it is his impressive force on the drumkit which helped create the fit bod. I suspect it’s a symbiotic relationship. Either way, there’s a couple of explosive bath bombs in this particular bathtub.

Olly and I had a chat about Fallin’ Thru and what it was about. I appreciate it, when Olly told me he likes to hear about what the lyrics mean to the listener.

Happily Olly confirmed my thoughts that the song was about a toxic relationship, but it’s also where there is something about the thought of it that you can’t totally let it go. I particularly liked the slightly ambiguous theme of “crawling back” in the lyric, where I wasn’t quite sure which one in the relationship was the one who might weaken; who might seek out the other again despite the likely catastrophic circumstances. Having had a similar vibe in such a relationship years back (here she was keener than me, although we both knew it was a totally bad idea), there are ultimately no winners.

Olly also cleared up one lyrical mystery (or at least it was a mystery to me). The line “there’s been no peace since 1998” had me wondering about the duo shedding tears for the England football team failure to penalties in the 98 World Cup, but of course, it is a subtle reference to the band Peace and their 1998 song, and a reference to how tunes might draw you back into such memories. I might not be Peace’s biggest fan, but I’ve even seen them live, so I should have guessed. Hahaha another reviewing fail.

I’m clearly not the only one to sing the praises of Bathtub, Introduction is motoring towards 10,000 Spotify hits in less than 8 weeks; a most respectable tally and I can only see more people getting into this young duo as their latest studio tunes get circulated.

Chris R

• Images taken from the band’s social media