PopMatters reviews Club 8’s The People’s Record

Club 8 recently released their seventh album, The People’s Record, and PopMatters pretty loves it. However, I found it particularly interesting that the review focuses on the morbid, morose side of the album, eventually concluding that The People’s Record is “party music centered upon the fact that we’re all going to die.”

I haven’t been able to pick up The People’s Record, so I can’t really agree or disagree with PopMatters’ nihilistic interpretation of the album, but that phrase sticks with me. Of course, music that blends exuberant pop with morose musings on mortality are nothing new. How else do you explain the careers of Morrissey and Robert Smith (to name only two)? And I would certainly agree that Club 8’s music has always had a greyer shade to its otherwise sunny, effervescent melodies.

That’s just one of art’s glorious mysteries, the way in which it can blend such seemingly opposite emotions or ideas into a cohesive happy/sad, bittersweet whole that achieves a deeper emotional resonance than if it just stayed at one end of the emotional spectrum.

The People’s Record is now out on Labrador Records.

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