Cub Sport - Jesus At the Gay Bar (2023)

For their entire career, Cub Sport have been searching for some kind of absolution. To listen to the Brisbane band's music is to see a process of unburdening and unlearning in slow motion: their four albums to date plot a progression away from shame and towards joy, celebration and pure euphoria. On their resplendent fifth album Jesus At The Gay Bar, Cub Sport finally reach that point of ecstatic lightness, or at least somewhere close to it. Using the language of bright, crystalline dance music as shorthand for a kind of hard-won spiritual freedom, Jesus At The Gay Bar finds the four-piece - Tim Nelson, Sam Netterfield, Zoe Davis and Dan Puusaari - largely shedding hangups and celebrating love and life in all its manifestations. 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 - and 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."