CUB SPORT: ‘LIKE NIRVANA’ ALBUM REVIEW
The queer ‘coming-of-age’ album you never knew you needed
Fans of The 1975, Years and Years, and Tove Lo are sure to love the fourth studio album from independent Australian alt-pop group, Cub Sport, due out this Friday. The Brisbane-based band are recognised by their growing global fanbase as a beacon of queer pride, self-love and acceptance. Last year was a good one for the four rising musicians; their critically-acclaimed third album, ‘Cub Sport,’ made it to number 1 on the Australian album charts, they had a successful European tour, with their first plays on Radio 1 and Radio X.
“I’m prepared to reveal everything in these songs”
Heartfelt and exposed ‘LIKE NIRVANA’ signifies a daring new chapter for Cub Sport, encapsulating the coming-of-age confessions of bandleader and songwriter Tim Nelson who came out publicly as gay in 2017, saying “I’m prepared to reveal everything in these songs”, determining the essence of the new album. It recasts them and their bandmates - multi-instrumentalists, Zoe Davis, Sam Netterfield, and Dan Puusaari in a new light; moving away from the surface-level lyrics characterising their previous albums, into more vulnerable territory.
Themes running through the album span from the carefree idealism of young love, “sometimes you’re so perfect that it’s hurting me / wish I could dig deeper give you all of me” (in ‘Break Me Down’) and “live like this live like Nirvana / breathe you in like Marijuana” (in ‘Nirvana’), to the much darker lyrics of ‘Saint’, an exploration of Nelson’s psyche, which expresses a battle with with internal demons as well as the external pressures of toxic masculinity.
The second song on the album, ‘Confessions,’ sets the scene for the rest of the album with a visceral outpouring of angsty confessions each starting with “the truth is” and building up to a dramatic percussive crescendo as the intensity of the revelations escalates. The hazy, summer-evening ambience of ‘I Feel Like I Am Changin’ seems to encapsulate feelings of growing older and feeling different against the backdrop of a well-known place and its associated nostalgia. The later songs in the album become ethereal and anthemic, culminating in ‘Grand Canyon’ which, with its organ-esque instrumentals, somehow evokes the impression of being in a cathedral with quietly empowering lyrics being directed straight at the listener.
“It’s liberating to be so open after spending most of my life hiding”
Nelson explained how writing the album provided an opportunity to acknowledge some issues that had been pushed down: “It’s liberating to be so open after spending most of my life hiding everything about who I am and what I'm feeling. It felt good to acknowledge my whole self on this album, and to let out a lot of things that I had been holding on to.”
“Allowing myself to exist and create through both the light and dark times brought out raw emotions and while the results weren’t always your classic ‘feel-good’ songs, what I created made me feel good.”
Tentative and explorative, LIKE NIRVANA, is one band’s attempt to navigate the emotional challenges and complexities of what it means to be young and queer in today’s world; exploring embedded trauma and the trials of overcoming it, and touching on religious reckoning, body image, oppressive structures of masculinity, and feelings of inadequacy. While an alternative teenage audience will easily connect with this album, I think everyone will find a nostalgic joy in the raw emotion it expresses.