Their new album, released on Good Friday, is named after a poem by Jay Hulme, in which a tortured gay boy approaches Jesus at a gay bar, begging to be healed. Still, the big tracks will hit hard live, in what will surely be their most jubilant shows to date, and amid surging transphobia, the band’s message feels more potent than ever. By track seven it feels as though Cub Sport are revisiting sounds and motifs from this album and albums past, and the stylistic cohesion on Jesus at the Gay Bar can render some songs indistinct and unmemorable. The back end of the record is less remarkable, however. Lead single Always Got the Love, co-produced by Simon Lam of excellent, dormant Melbourne electronic duo Kllo, is the album’s most dynamic moment, fusing Cub Sport’s trademark ethereality with a warm dopamine rush of chords at the one-minute drop and thereafter. House music, popularised in nightclubs as queer places of refuge and solidarity, was deemed the perfect sound to celebrate pride and freedom following 2020’s stunning Like Nirvana, which was cathartic, but shot through with pain. Written during the pandemic, visions of post-lockdown euphoria dovetailed nicely with the band’s flourishing out-and-proud identities (keyboardist/guitarist Zoe Davis also married her longtime girlfriend last year). Their fifth album, Jesus at the Gay Bar, is the fullest celebration yet of how far they’ve come. Since their second album, 2017’s Bats, the four-piece band has centred queer love with increasing confidence and self-acceptance, without glossing over the more harrowing aspects of their journey. But in 2016, the couple came out, and married two years later. It wasn’t always this way for Cub Sport’s lead vocalist and songwriter (Nelson) and keyboardist/vocalist (Netterfield), who met as teens at Brisbane’s Northside Christian College, described by the band as a “homophobic hellscape”. You need only visit the Brisbane band’s Instagram page to see their love documented in all its unabashed glory, mainly through photos of the couple kissing (typically while also serving looks). Celebrating queer love: Cub Sport’s new album, Jesus at the Gay Bar.Ĭub Sport’s Tim Nelson and Sam Netterfield are #couplegoals.

Super denoising review