Bugeye: The Shape of Things

Bugeye: The Shape of Things

(INH Records)

All Formats Available

Out Now

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Croydon based queer electro-pop outfit Bugeye return with second album The Shape of Things, available now on INH Records

It’s been almost a decade since Loud Women’s first brought Bugeye to LTW’s attention and more than 5 years since their debut album, Ready Steady Bang, was included in our Top 100 albums of 2020. While it’s been a few years, new album, The Shape Of Things is well worth the wait and Bugeye are firing on all cylinders.

The record pulls together numerous themes, including those of identity, control, and pushing back against systems that try to box us in. The Shape of Things is a journey through the modern world that explores media manipulation, isolation, and distraction, as well as our obsession with technology, self-improvement, and societal pressures as well as examining love, desire, rebellion, and the contradictions of contemporary life—from anger and frustration to hope and defiance—there’s a thread which runs through the record of questioning what we’re told to be, and choosing something more honest and self-defined instead. Speaking of the album, frontwoman Angela Martin explains, ‘The Shape of Things’ feels like a real moment of clarity for us. As a band, it reflects us stepping into who we are without apology. We’ve always been DIY and outspoken, but this record feels more focused and intentional, like we’re not asking for space anymore, we’re taking it. Sonically, it’s bigger, more direct, and more confident, but still keeps that raw edge that defines us.’

Founded in 2018, front woman and Bugeye’s chief songwriter, Angela Martin, formed the band with school friend and bass player Paula Snow, before joining forces with drummer Suzy Gould and Lex Giggs to devise the next chapter of Bugeye. A band that has a ‘give no fucks’ attitude and the tunes come wrapped in a riotous optimism that demands you dance along, blending dark 80s-inspired synths with distorted guitars. With one foot in pop’s past—think 70s dance floor meets post-punk meets noughties optimism—they’re also at the forefront of an experimental new electro-pop sound that sees the band moving towards influence from the likes of Goldfrapp, Gary Numan and Depeche Mode.

The Shape of Things has been produced and mixed by Ash Workman (She Drew The Gun, Christine and the Queens) with co-production and arrangements by Angela Martin of Bugeye, The Shape of Things was mastered by Katie Tavini (Rudimental, Arlo Parks, Los Bitchos). As with previous releases Bugeye have leaned into familiar, iconic textures as a starting point before reshaping them into something ‘current’. Guitars that sound like synths, dirty and glitchy in places, sit alongside those darker electronic tones, tying everything together in a totally new sound.

Opening with the pulsating Comfortably Numb, which was also released as a single earlier in the year, offering the first taste of the band’s new sonic direction which lyrically captures that tipping point between euphoria and chaos on a night out, all taken from personal experience. Angela explaining, ‘There’s something about getting lost in the night that can feel really freeing, like you can step outside of yourself for a while, but the comedown, the sunrise, tells a very different story.’  Never has a night out been so well documented in a song since Flowered Up’s Weekender, although here condensed into just over 3mins.

This is followed by The Best, a pop banger and This Is What I Want, a track which has me thinking back to The Flying Lizards and Top Of The Pops. Not that Martin’s vocals ape those of Deborah Evans-Stickland, maybe it’s the combination of synths, singing and spoken word. It’s a crying shame that there aren’t any weekly music shows on television as Bugeye are a band who deserve to be seen and heard. That said, I’m not sure they would get away with performing This Ain’t A Love Song, the sharp, sarcastic anti-love anthem in front of an early evening audience with its catchy ‘you’re a dick, you’re a dick’ chorus; although it would be interesting to see any reaction to the track calling out narcissists. The track flips the breakup ballad on its head. Instead of longing or heartbreak, it delivers biting humor and raw honesty about dodging a toxic relationship. It is brutal, catchy, and unapologetically savage – it’s the sound of saying what everyone else is too polite to.

Reaching the centre point in the album is recent single These Walls Will Fall, a look at modern society. A track which comes from ‘that feeling that we’re constantly being pushed to focus on what separates us; politics, culture, identity, while the real power structures, the real architects of it all stay hidden and out of sight’ reveals Martin, ’It is a refusal to buy into that. It’s a reminder that division is a tactic, and unity is a threat. And when people start seeing through the noise, those walls won’t hold”

There’s a Goldfrapp tinge to Are We Still Breathing? while Dirty Feds And Robbers, has a darker Numan-esque tone to it extruding paranoia. There’s no slowing down in quality as the album enters its final section. VIP incorporates regular vocals, spoken word and a bit of a rap from Martin. Whilst a serious song it also offers a little humour in its delivery. The penultimate Welcome To The Team is more traditional Bugeye fare, a pulsating number looking at the corporate world on which so many of us, rely on. The closing Model Behaviour has gone straight into my ‘favourite’ songs by the band. It’s a slower paced and more considered than most of what’s come before, both on this album and previous releases. Lyrically it echoes much of The Shape of Things, in particular it’s the defiance as it explores themes of self-worth and resisting societal ’norms’

The Shape of Things captures, for better or worse, where ‘we’ are in 2026 and worthy of all ‘End of Year’ lists…

Live Dates:

23 May – Quarters, Brighton (w/ Dodgy)
29 May – PocoLoco. Chatham
05 June – Bullet Festival, London
13 June – The Grace, London (Album Launch)
19 July – Dalton’s, Brighton
24 July – Trowbridge Fest

Find Bugeye via their LinkTree

Photo courtesy of Bugeye

All words by Iain Key. See his author profile here or find him via his LinkTree