Club Night Embrace Friendship on Inspiring and Improbable New Album
Photo Credit: Marisa Bazan
“Oh, how I love my friends!”
Those are the endearing words achingly delivered from Club Night frontman Joshua Bertram roughly halfway the band’s long-anticipated and improbably great new album, “Joy Coming Down.”
That paean to companionship is one of the many stirring lyrics found in “Dream,” a zigging explosion of coiled tension, dramatic release and restless energy that serves as a thesis statement of sorts for the album.
Because, while “Joy Coming Down” is about many heavy things—anger, sadness, regret and confusion—it is ultimately an album about friendship. The kind of friendship that survives real disappointment, upheaval and uncertainty. In short, the friendship that defines the collective bond that powers the members of Club Night.
“This record obviously took a long time to make, so when we started writing it, we weren’t the same people that we are now,” said bassist Devin Trainer. “I can only speak personally, but from my experience, the importance and the meaningfulness of our friendship has only multiplied over the years. It’s kind of all we have.”
That circle-the-wagons unity has been borne out of a seemingly endless series of professional setbacks and personal changes, which, when viewed as a whole, lead one to believe that the release of “Joy Coming Down”—out today—as something of a minor miracle.
Shortly after Club Night released their fiendishly exciting and visceral full length debut album “What Life,” their label and champion, Tiny Engines, imploded amidst a series of financial malfeasance accusations. (The label has since re-formed under the guidance of owner Will Miller, who was not involved in the fiscal shenanigans. Miller has been a long time supporter of Club Night and fittingly “Joy Coming Down” is being issued on the reborn Tiny Engines.)
The band had written plenty of material prior to the label troubles, but when the pandemic hit, the group essentially shut down operations for an entire year, feeling creatively stifled and uneasy making art during a time of global suffering. Following the pandemic, both Bertram and Trainer relocated, to Detroit and Portland respectively, leaving the band with only two members—guitarist Ian Tatum and drummer/programmer Nicholas Cowman—left in Oakland, where Club Night was formed.
Despite those litany of travails, the band remained disarmingly upbeat about the prospects of one day completing “Joy Coming Down.”
“I don’t ever remember thinking at any time that we weren’t going to finish this album,” said Cowman. “It took a long time, yes, but I never really doubted the final product.”
That final product is a deeply ambitious, wildly inventive epic, with “Joy Coming Down” definitively delivering on six years of promise. It may sound hyperbolic, but there is no band around that sounds quite like Club Night.
While they might borrow intricate instrumentation techniques from Midwest emo legends Cap’n Jazz and Bertram’s dynamic delivery at times recalls UK indie rockers Los Campesinos!, there isn’t a group capable of shoehorning as many sounds, tempos, feelings and genres into a single finished product.
Every track feels like an operatic suite, but where lesser bands might create that atmosphere through indulgent bombast, Club Night’s variegated approach is driven by pure, desperate emotion. There has never been a false note or a single point of artifice in Club Night’s catalog and “Joy Coming Down” is no exception.
The key to Club Night is a musical formula that can only be described as generous. Egalitarian to the core, Club Night songs are composed like a puzzle, with each member nestling their contribution within the bigger picture—all making their individual mark known without distracting from the end goal. Tatum’s guitar licks range from delicate, gossamer ribbons to thick, chunky riffs, Trainer and Cowman’s rhythmic concision forms the foundation of the sound and an array of samples and eerie voice manipulations add to the world-building feel of the music.
“I think our sound is kind of a product of necessity,” said Tatum. “It’s almost that DIY approach—as in, this is what we each bring to the table, so let’s see what we can do. A lot of times, Josh will bring us an idea and then we all take our turns kind of taking it apart and then putting it back together. That’s just how we work.”
That locked-in, utterly unique sonic output—call it math rock, art-rock, indie rock, whatever—would make “Joy Coming Down” an imminently listenable album even if it was filled with purely instrumental tracks. But that universe is amplified and expanded by Bertram’s unmistakable and endlessly rangy vocal contributions. Known in the past for his whimsical, waifish falsetto, Betram builds upon that high register for “Joy Coming Down” by adding dramatic baritone shouts and violent interjections, creating the impression of an ongoing conversation throughout the album.
“I take this job really seriously—it stresses me out to sing, because all these songs are so epic,” said Bertram. “All our instrumentation and composition is so beautiful and I don’t want to step over it with some bullshit. I’m so in awe of how talented these guys are and sometimes I get so excited singing over their music that I end up just blaring stuff out. For this album, I wanted to create something a little more dynamic—to almost have two vocalists with two different identities.”
Underpinning those energetic, tetchy vocal arrangements are Bertram’s most personal, moving and poetic lyrics to date. In the past, Bertram’s words were opaque and interpretative—beautiful fever dreams and streams of consciousness that felt like fragments of a reverie. On “Joy Coming Down,” his lyrics are more direct, focusing on both the universal and personal. There are screeds bemoaning the cyclical and cynical recklessness of political leaders (“Palace”) sitting alongside mournful elegies of familial loss (“Judah.”)
Towering over all the tracks is “Rabbit,” a glorious coda written in honor of Bertram’s musical mentor, Scott Hutchinson of Scottish band Frightened Rabbit, who tragically took his own life in 2018. For that song, Betram’s heart, aorta and ventricles are all laid bare, returning to the motif of thankfulness for friendship first explored in “Dream.” On “Rabbit,” he sings that he’s “found hope in the memories,” a moving ode for anyone who’s lost a loved one–something that’s achingly familiar for me personally.
As I have touched upon for this website, my good friend Nick recently passed away. I wrote about how music has helped keep his memory alive, so when I hear Bertram deliver those words it fills me with a rush of emotions—chief among them gratitude for having someone describe my feelings so deftly and delicately.
It feels all the more meaningful coming from Betram—someone I’ve been friends with for several years now. Over that time, I’ve grown to know the other members of Club Night, and I can’t think of a more earnest, kind and authentic group of individuals.
That’s why it’s no surprise that “Joy Coming Down” is an homage to their friendship—a brimming, nontoxic and supportive fraternization. The album is bolstered by its two poles—“Rabbit” being an invocation and eulogy for those gone, and “Dream” being a reminder and celebration of those still here. That depth and significance is not lost upon the members of Club Night, like when they hear Betram sing “the kindness that you have shown/I am so grateful for” on “Dream.”
“It means everything to hear that,” said Trainer. “That’s the main DNA of the band—our friendship is the central thing. It’s absolutely fucking enormous to hear those words from Josh.”
With their roster scattered across three states, it’s unclear what the path forward is for Club Night, but all the members of the band expressed interest in touring and supporting the album if it made sense logistically and financially. Regardless, the individuals of Club Night will remain connected, in one form or another.
“I hope these guys are aware of how desperate I am for their approval, because I respect them so much,” said Bertram. “They are my family. It’s not like we grew up with each other—we found each other through the music. This band has been a pretty amazing bonding agent.”