Cub Sport, The Band, Is About 'More Than Just The Music'

It’s an unseasonably warm winter’s day, there’s a crispness to the air, and Tim Nelson of Cub Sport is doing his taxes. “Sam [Netterfield, Cub Sport keyboardist] does pretty much all of it, and I’ve just stepped in to help a little bit,” Nelson explains, sounding surprisingly relaxed for a freelancer at bookkeeping time. “I was just like, ‘I know why I leave this to you,” he laughs. “It’s complicated working for yourself.”

Nelson would know. Cub Sport, the band that he has led for almost a decade, is an almost entirely self-managed institution, free from many of the corporate intricacies that bog down other acts. Each of the band’s releases – including their widely beloved, commercial powerhouse from 2017, Bats – has been stridently independent. These are songs with all the urgency of diary entries, delivered by performers who have deliberately avoided the concessions that you usually have to make to financial overlords. “We do everything ourselves,” Nelson says, simply.

He doesn’t just mean the creative side of things either. Nelson has even drawn up his own business plan for the band’s future, and constantly updates the direction he wants the group to move in. “We have a five-year plan. We always have all of our goals that we’re working towards. And we always keep making new ones as we knock over ones that we get to.”

Of course, that kind of self-directed business model comes with its downsides too – one of them being the ever-present risk of burnout. Nelson’s been flirting with that kind of exhaustion recently; for the most part Cub Sport haven’t stopped touring and releasing music since 2016, when they dropped their debut This Is Our Vice. He knows that it’d probably be easier to manage that schedule if he cared a little less: “It feels like we’ve been going for so long without stopping that it’s like, ‘Maybe it would be good if we didn’t love it so much.' That way we could chill and let it happen.

“But for me, it’s amazing getting to do something you care about so much," Nelson says. "And even though it can get pretty tiring, it’s worth it, putting in the hard work and seeing what you always wanted to happen, happen.”

For Nelson, that means getting to see his band forge connections in the world. That’s the only reason he does any of this – to transform his own lived experience into these heartfelt packages of musical empathy, and present them to a steadily growing audience, all too eager to take whatever Cub Sport have to give. “When it connects with people in a meaningful way – that’s what makes a successful album,” Nelson explains.

Better yet, these days, thanks to the digital era we find ourselves in, it’s not hard for Nelson to tell whether a song like the shimmering Sometimes has found a place in people’s hearts. “Our DMs are always full with people telling us straight up how much the music has helped them.

“But we also try to make Cub Sport more than just about the music. We get a lot of people who tell us how the band makes them feel supported and proud, and has given them the courage to live their truth. Which is incredibly rewarding.”

Rewarding, of course, but risky. After all, how many other once great bands have allowed themselves to be won over by their own good press? Oscar Wilde said that the two worst things in life are not getting what you want and getting what you want – there’s always the possibility that too much support can shape and alter your understanding of your own product.

For that reason, Nelson mostly tries to disconnect from his own hype these days. “I feel like if I try to think too much about who is going to be listening to the music, and who I want to listen to the music, it doesn’t feel like I’m writing from as much of a genuine place,” Nelson explains. “It can be really hard to switch off that side of things. Especially as we progress in our career, and it feels like the stakes get higher with each release. But I feel like my best writing comes when I’m working outside of that mindset.”

Instead, when writing an album like the heartfelt Cub Sport, Nelson retreats into himself. His songs always start with a moment of clarity, with the realisation that what he is thinking and feeling is true. “I have to connect with it,” he says. “If [a song] brings up something in me, or it feels like it releases me from something that I have been feeling, and if I can’t stop listening to it, those are all good signs for me.”

Often, Nelson isn’t even sure why a song is moving him while he’s writing it. There have been times where he’s written from a place of pure catharsis, sure, but most of the time, he’s just following impulses. “Sometimes I’ll have lyrics that will just come out that I don’t entirely understand. But it’s a feeling that I have. And then down the track, I’ll listen to it and be like, ‘Oh wow, that’s what that meant to me.’ Sometimes it is very obviously about something, and other times it is really cathartic without realising it.”

That kind of invisible therapy came to a head during the writing of Bats, the second Cub Sport record. Nelson was writing what he thought were innocuous songs about his life and his feelings, only to discover, in retrospect, that they were all songs of adoration, directed towards his bandmate and now husband Sam “Bolan” Netterfield.

“I was writing all these songs about Bolan and I. And I genuinely was convinced that I was writing about something that wasn’t personal. And he was listening to those songs and he knew exactly what was going on. It’s what gave him the courage to tell me how he felt. I felt all of that came from my subconscious before I was ready to acknowledge it.”

Which to someone else might be scary, maybe – this knowledge that your artistic whims are not entirely under your control. But not for Nelson. “I’ve adjusted to it,” he says. “It’s kind of just the way that I work as a writer. I’m very revealing. It is what it is.”

These days, Nelson is looking to keep things uncharacteristically low-key. After a long period of touring and recording, he’s shifting into a recuperative mode, writing whenever he has spare time. “This week and next week are the first times that I haven’t had shows or that I’ve had to be flying for in a really long time,” he says. “So I have been spending a good amount of time in my home studio. Bolan and I have been trying to stick to a little daily schedule.”

Of course, that period of rest and relaxation will be pretty short-lived; Cub Sport’s headlining spot at Brisbane Festival is on the horizon, and Nelson is amped. “I’m really excited about it. I just saw the full line-up. I’m big fans of [so many of the acts].” But for now, Nelson is taking a little time for himself. Oh, and his taxes.