Cry Club

Cry Club has never done anything by half, that’s for sure. Guitarist Jonathon Tooke (he/him) and vocalist Heather Riley (they/them) made their explosive debut as Cry Club back in 2018, and even back then they were turning heads with their surprising, textured take on modern punk-alt-pop. And yes, there’s a lot of genre-dashes when it comes to Cry Club. It’d be doing them a disservice to leave any of their studied references out. The last two singles from Cry Club, High Voltage Anxiety and For Your Health, were self-produced by the duo, offering them uninhibited freedom to push their sound as far as it would go. The result is something like the bolt-and-screws interior of a complicated metallic machine; catching light in strange and beautiful ways as the cogs whir and turn. Every moment in this new music from Cry Club is pressurised, immersive, all-encompassing — and yet, despite the wall of noise, every decibel is considered with curiosity and care. Every sound has a reason for being.