Cub Sport - LIKE NIRVANA (2020)

"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, 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, LIKE NIRVANA 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 expressionthey nowidentify as 'free', and use both neutral and male pronounsthe 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 thanever. If This Is Our Vice introduced Cub Sport, and BATS and Cub Sport made them stars, then LIKE NIRVANA is the record that solidifies them as daring, open-hearted renegades.