It's Been A Year Of Personal Development (Not Least In Figuring Out The Ukulele)

Cub Sport

Brisbane-based pop/soul four-piece Cub Sport are about to release their ultra-groovy second album BATS. Frontman and key songwriter Tim Nelson shares that he had some high-profile help with one of the tracks on the album, and that this seriously put him out of his writing and recording comfort zone.

"There were a couple of co-writes on the album," he explains. "I wrote Give It To Me (Like You Mean It) with Sarah Blasko. That was a really different writing experience for me. I'd never really been a part of a song that was based around a ukulele. When she started playing the ukulele part, when we were in the studio together, at first I said, 'Hmm, I don't know how I'm going to go writing around this.' But then it kinda just flowed."

So much so that that the most spontaneous, off the cuff performances of that track were the ones that made it through to the final cut. "She went into the recording room to record the ukulele part," he recalls, "I stayed in the control room with the producer we were working with. I had a mic in there just to record a guide vocal. I recorded it, and the one that ended up on the album is the first time that I sang through it.

"When I went into the vocal booth to record my proper vocals, I couldn't remember anything that I'd sung. We listened to the guide vocal and decided to just go with that."

Something that strikes the listener upon initial listens to the record is the sheer variety of sounds and styles that the band has utilised across the course of the record's running length. Nelson attributes this, at least in part, to the gamut of feelings he happened to be going through during the writing and recording process.

"It was just about getting them to a place where they felt right for what the song was," he says. "There was a variety of emotions that I was feeling that I was trying to put into music. I think that's where the stylistic broadness of the album comes from."

Indeed, Nelson has been through a great deal of change and upheaval in his personal life over the past few years, and this cannot help but have an effect on his creative output. "Across the last couple of years, there's been a lot of personal development," he states, "in that time, Sam [keyboardist Sam Netterfield] and I have come out, and entered a relationship together. And navigating the last album campaign was a really new experience as well, and it's been a highly emotional time. So the album was written from a very vulnerable place."

The band are waiting for fans to truly get their heads around the record before they head out on tour in support of it, the tour kicking off in February next year. "They're our biggest shows that we've ever played," Nelson enthuses, "I don't think we ever dreamed that we'd be headlining the Metro in Sydney!"