Club Night is a band that knows the power of punctuation. The title of the Oakland group’s first (and to date only) album, What Life, can imply radically different sentiments if followed by a question mark, an exclamation point, or an ellipsis. Club Night opted to include none of these, and as a result the album’s name can simultaneously signify all three, turning the title itself into a Schrödinger’s box of meaning.
You could easily assume this ambiguity was accidental if it weren’t so well-reflected in the album itself. What Life is a riotously emotional album, but the exact emotion can be difficult to pin down. Every song pulses with an addicting mix of joy, rage, anguish, and youthful angst, often switching between each within a few bars or even improbably occupying a liminal space between all four. Tracks like “Path” and “Thousands” in particular overwhelm the listener with so many feelings that there is little choice but just to feel, prying hearts open in a way that only the most affecting music can.
Vinyl LP, Cassette
Although its genre ties are a tad slippery, What Life’s fluency in angst positions it catty-corner to the collection of bands commonly associated with the emo canon. One especially quick touch point is Cap’n Jazz, another one-album wonder with a similar proclivity for twinkly riffs and raucous vocals. Club Night calls back to these tropes, but lead singer Josh Bertram ups the ante on Cap’n Jazz’s charmingly adolescent caterwauls by singing in a heightened register. As a stylistic touch, it’s devilishly effective, making every chorus sound like it’s being cathartically delivered by your own inner child screaming to be heard in a society trained to ignore it.
But unlike Cap’n Jazz, Club Night is not a Midwest band. They’re from Oakland, and What Life channels its Bay Area influence in equal measure. This ranges from the lo-fi spikiness of Oakland punk groups like Preening and BAUS (“Trance,” “Wit”) to the disarming jangle pop of San Francisco bands like Chime School and The Umbrellas (“Village,” “Wit” again). Unsurprisingly, Club Night’s members have extensive CVs playing elsewhere in the Bay’s close-knit indie community. Although they still tour as Club Night, it’s tempting to see the band as a sort of supergroup side project, and their singular album as the product of several talented musicians coming together to bottle a bit of lightning before going their separate ways.
Vinyl LP, Cassette
This framing isn’t strictly true, but it does lend What Life a certain mystique. And with the album hitting its five year anniversary this month, it seems an appropriate time to look back and establish it as a bona fide gem, one formed from the unique pressures surrounding the scene that produced it. Like Club Night’s sole album, the Bay Area is a space awash in contradictions—or, perhaps more accurately, a space where the contradictions of the wider world are magnified: a place of immense beauty and manifest hardship, as quick to lift your spirits as it is to break them. What life, indeed.
