Nuclear Club reach for the stars with cosmo-electronica album ‘Black Cats Are Bad Luck’
The band return with their 4th album.
Photo: Nuclear Club
Black Cats Are Bad Luck is the fourth release from electronic-rock group Nuclear Club and from the start it promises richly woven melodies and hypnotic, four-minute stories. Its opener — Hexavalent Chromium — is the sonic equivalent of blasting off into space on three tabs of acid. The title track, meanwhile, shows clear influence from LCD Soundsystem, resulting in vaporwave soundscapes and psychedelic mystery.
And that’s where Nuclear Club really shine; promising music in that chill-if-thrilling liminal space unlike any other kind of music, evident in tracks like Skeleton Fantasy Show and I Fought the Law. There’s more mainstream electronica in the sublime It Rests and delectably synthy Classical Spotlight, before the album closes on cryptic, melancholic Paternoster.
Black Cats Are Bad Luck is teeming with homages and influences of past and present; the likes of legendary inspirations LCD Soundsystem and Radiohead, shades of ‘90s hip-hop and fellow modern-day contemporaries like Teenage Waitress and El Knight. But the album isn’t simply a big love letter to the electronic movement.
Across ten tracks, Nuclear Club’s fourth LP creates a cohesive soundscape; a narrative of dreamy, dark-mode electronica – frequently blurring the lines between haunting melodies and synthy club beats. It’s an album which bears listening to more than once. Which is just as well, because I’m on spin number ten.
Black Cats Are Bad Luck is out now.