Club 8 - A Year with Club 8 (2024) Hi-Res

Club 8 have long been the kind of restless band not content to keep making the same record over and over. Unlike many groups who strike out when they attempt new things, the duo of Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård pretty much knock the cover off the ball every time they take a swing. Previous albums have taken on trip-hop, African pop, sample-based electronic, and synth pop, to name a few. 2025's A Year with Club 8 delves into fuzzy punk-pop with big hooks, guitars that jangle and crash, and tempos that inspire dancing around the room with abandon -- or staring moodily into space on the slower numbers. Of course, anyone following Angergård's other group the Legends wouldn't be shocked that Club 8 can pull off this sound, since he pretty much perfected it on albums like Up Against the Legends. The big difference is that Komstedt takes the lead vocal on most of the songs, and she proves more than up to the task, balancing the noise and clatter with cool sophistication. It's the classic Swedish indie pop approach, and since Club 8 were one of the early practitioners, it makes sense that they know how to do it so well; the truly amazing thing is that after so long and so many albums they still do it so well. In fact, the strength of the songs -- like the romping "Something's Wrong in My Head," the candy-sweet "All I Know," or the gloomy "Sunny," where the duo trade off vocals and channel the Jesus and Mary Chain -- seem to indicate that the well is nowhere close to running dry. Club 8 have always been a band to rely on for strong melodies and songs that radiate warmth from deep within -- no matter how chilly the surfaces -- and they haven't changed much. In fact, they sound as good as ever, and A Year with Club 8 is one of their best albums yet.