To Club Night, dystopia is just an arm’s reach away. On their full-length debut What Life, the band ensconce this sense of foreboding in snappy, math-rock-inspired melodies and whimsical instrumentation. Frontman Josh Bertram, as an unabashed fan of ’90s emo cult icons Cap’n Jazz, cites Tim Kinsella as a personal mentor. What Life is crisper and more clear-cut than Cap’n Jazz’s sole album, trading Kinsella’s screamy grit for the vivacious spirit of Los Campesinos! At various points, Club Night evoke the splendor of The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, the freaky jubilance of Architecture in Helsinki, and the twinkling fuzz of early Now, Now.
But they’re greater than the sum of their influences, making What Life delightfully familiar even as the album exists in a space of its own. Bertram is no newcomer to indie-rock trends: His previous group, Our Brother the Native, rode a mid-2000s wave of experimental folk. Though, by his own admission, those early releases don’t hold up, they weren’t for nothing: What Life not only expands on the musical dexterity of Club Night’s 2017 EP Hell Ya, but it demonstrates that Bertram, now with more than a decade of musicianship behind him, has finally homed in on the cohesive, propulsive sound he was trying to achieve all along.
On opener “Path,” drummer Josiah Majetich’s quarter-note hits prompt a cacophony of riffs and screeches. One of the album’s chief dilemmas arises less than 60 seconds in: “To be honest, I don’t know how long it takes to create a conscience,” Bertram admits in a nervy, androgynous tone. As the song continues, he condemns the “bad advice” of older generations, however well-intended. Club Night’s drive to break ties with the past parallels their ability to channel their predecessors without seeming juvenile or outdated. Some of the album’s sharpest musicianship comes on “Cherry,” by way of pinpricked guitars and rumbling drums that are as joyous as the lyrics are desolate (“I carefully kept this pristine terror from my old life/On the rural atlas where I was born/Feeling like a tourist in my own mind”), before lulling into a relaxed outro that assumes the place of a mid-album interlude.
As often as What Life directs its energy outward, Club Night also indulge in some angst. “So begins the 20-odd years of my idiotic war,” Bertram laments on “Trance,” but the self-pity stops there. “Wit” offers an immediate counterweight, crashing in with an army of power chords separated by breakdowns in 6/8 time. “Village,” the album’s poppiest cut, plants a surprise seed of optimism: “All these hurtful words no longer stir in me/And I move on/Wrote myself a little love song,” Bertram sings. Embellished with eccentric guitar plucks, the song is a sunbeam that diffuses an otherwise gloomy outlook. Rather than let sorrow to turn to despair, What Life grounds its emotional tumult in vivacious intensity.
