Australia’s Cub Sport have released their glistening new track, “Songs About It”, taken from their recently announced fifth album, Jesus At The Gay Bar. The newest track cuts to the heart of the latest incarnation of the beloved Brisbane four-piece. A piece of euphoric, starry-eyed piano house, “Songs About It” is about getting stuck in a moment of hedonistic, split-second joy and memorialising it in the form of pure pop. It follow previous tracks, “Keep Me Safe”, “Replay” and “Always Got The Love”.
Out everywhere on Good Friday, April 7th via Cub Sport Records, Jesus At The Gay Bar is available for pre-order now HERE. Cub Sport have also announced a North American headline tour today, kicking off May 31st at The Echo in Los Angeles. Tickets will go on sale on Friday, March 3rd at 10 AM local time – purchase HERE.
On their resplendent, upcoming fifth album Jesus At The Gay Bar – the title of which was inspired by writer Jay Hulme’s poem of the same name – Cub Sport finally reach that point of ecstatic lightness, or at least somewhere close to it. Using the language of bright, crystalline dance music – with nods to house, 2-step and UK garage, while retaining the lush fragility of Cub Sport music past – as shorthand for a kind of hard-won spiritual freedom, Jesus At The Gay Bar finds Tim Nelson, Sam Netterfield, Zoe Davis and Dan Puusaari largely shedding hang-ups and celebrating love and life in all its manifestations.
Where Cub Sport’s 2020 album Like Nirvana was a bloodletting of sorts – dealing with the long, complex legacy that religious trauma can leave on a life – Jesus At The Gay Bar is about moving forward unencumbered. It’s an ode to celebrating one’s past, not just outrunning it, and looking boldly into the future, without the fear of past demons resurfacing. “There’s a lot from my life before I came out that has always been shrouded in shame, fear and secrecy. But it doesn’t have to be a secret anymore, and I feel like I can really shine a light on the magic of it and recognise and celebrate it for what it was and is,” says Nelson. “A lot of this album is validating my younger self – like if I could have heard some of these songs back then, I might have found some peace within myself sooner, maybe even celebration.”
Even if Jesus At The Gay Bar can’t slip back through time, it’s sure to find a home in the record collections of anyone looking to embrace the bright, bold potential of queer experience. This album is Cub Sport in all-bangers, few-ballads mode: the production here nods to house, 2-step and UK garage, while retaining the lush fragility of Cub Sport music past. These are dance songs whose beats capture the feeling of butterflies in your stomach and stars in your eyes. The crackling, kinetic “Songs About It” is a piano-house rave-up that’s thick with the heat of a summer dancefloor, while “Always Got The Love” stretches a feeling of pure devotion into a gripping, muscular groove. These songs might remind you of the past, or they might provide diamond-hard assurance that the future holds something honest and thrilling. Written during the pandemic, the carefree sound of Jesus At The Gay Bar was inspired by time spent in private, communing with nature and relaxing with friends and family. “I was so familiar with getting my joy and happiness from playing shows,” Nelson says. “I had to learn to find joy elsewhere. And that kind of lead to me wanting to make music that gave me that energy, and that at its core, felt uplifting.”
On Jesus At The Gay Bar, that sense of uplift is used to reify and exalt stories from Nelson and Netterfield’s past – namely, their love story. Across this record, the early days of their relationship, at the time shrouded in secrecy and fear, are memorialised for what they are: moments of beauty and youthful ecstasy. Many of these songs, “Keep Me Safe” and “Replay” among them, recognize those moments as necessary scenes of transformation and growth. Set to booming dance-pop, they play like fairy tales, stories to be heard over and over. It’s not the end of the story Cub Sport have been telling over their decade-plus as a band, but it does speak to something their music has always tried to convey – about music and artmaking as a powerful and spiritually emboldening process.
“I think that’s the beauty of writing honestly about my own life – it all fits together and reveals a little bit more of this greater story that’s still playing out, from an ever-evolving perspective but with the same heart,” Nelson says. “We have the self-appointed freedom to evolve and change and I think that’s why, five albums in, it still feels exciting.”
Jesus At The Gay Bar Tour – North America Summer 2023 Dates
May 31 – The Echo – Los Angeles, CA
June 1 – The Casbah – San Diego, CA
June 3 – Outloud Festival – West Hollywood, CA
June 4 – TBA – Salt Lake City, UT
June 6 – Café Du Nord – San Francisco, CA
June 8 – Madame Lou’s – Seattle, WA
June 9 – Mission Theatre – Portland, OR
June 10 – Biltmore – Vancouver, BC
June 14 – Marquis Theatre – Denver, CO
June 15 – Encore at Uptown – Kansas City, MO
June 17 – Amsterdam Bar & Hall – St. Paul, MN
June 18 – Beat Kitchen – Chicago, IL
June 20 – The Garrison – Toronto, ON
June 22 – Red Room @ Café 939 – Boston, MA
June 23 – Baby’s All Right – Brooklyn, NY
June 24 – Songbyrd – Washington, DC
June 25 – MilkBoy – Philadelphia, PA
June 27 – The Masquerade (Purgatory) – Atlanta, GA
June 29 – Empire Control Room – Austin, TX
June 30 – White Oak Music Hall (Upstairs) – Houston, TX
July 1 – Club Dada – Dallas, TX
July 3 – Valley Bar – Phoenix, AZ