“I’m prepared to tell everybody everything.” This statement from Cub Sport frontman and songwriter Tim Nelson, so clear-eyed and headstrong in its intent, is at the heart of the beloved Brisbane four-piece’s new album. “Like Nirvana”, is the band’s fourth record, embraces every side of Nelson: the angelic lightness as wellas the multiplicitious, haunted darkness. It recasts them and their bandmatesmulti-instrumentalists Zoe Davis, Sam Netterfield, and Dan Puusaarias fearless innovators, experimentalists willing to blow up everything about the Cub Sport of old in order to create this dazzling and daring new chapter.
Described by Nelson as more of a holistic release from Cub Sport in contrast to their largely linearearly records, This is a glistening, tightly-woven exploration of religious reckoning, oppressive structures of masculinity, and feelings of inadequacy. Dovetailing with a shift in Nelson’s gender expression they now identify as ‘free’, and use both neutral and male pronouns the record is impressionistic and abstract, pushing aside the brightly coloured realism of 2019’s self-titled record in favour of gauzy lucid dreams. Nelson’s embrace of raw emotion has pushed them and their bandmates, to create a record more fiercely emotive than ever.
The wonderful new Cub Sport video for their latest single ‘Be Your Man’ is an absolute must watch. Inspired by reigning queen Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’, the ‘Be Your Man’ visual is dramatic and beautiful, a middle finger to any binary societal norms about what it is to ‘be a man’. If you liked what you heard in ‘Be Your Man’ then fear not, as the band have a whole bag of new tracks for you, in what we like to call an album. ‘Like Nirvana’ came out at the end of last month and is, in the words of NME ‘their most stunning album yet’.
“Be Your Man” is taken from our fourth album “Like Nirvana”, out July 24th.
The Fat Angel Sings 