Live Review: Cub Sport, Clea

If you wanted to get the most out of $15 on Saturday night, catching Cub Sport and Clea at Jive was a brilliant way to do it. Brisbane local Clea gifted the crowd with a velvety tone that echoed the red curtain hanging at the back of the Jive stage. Her gaggle of normcore bandmates were clearly having a great time supporting her smooth, soaring vocals. Clea whipped out a beautiful cover of Crimson And Clover by Tommy James & The Shondells and showed off her top-notch finger picking while she was at it. The small crowd got shaking for Dire Consequences, which has enjoyed high rotation on the radio recently. Interestingly, she didn't play this as her last song, which led into an anticlimactic, downhill slide into the finish of her set.

Nothing could keep the fans down for long as they waited for the main event. From the opening bell, Cub Sport attracted wall-to-wall appreciative whoops and could hardly settle the crowd between songs. During Come On Mess Me Up, singer Tim Nelson was almost drowned out by the crowd's belting voices. At the song's conclusion, he stood in awe of the crowd's ecstatic cheers and laughed as he couldn't quell them for the good part of a minute. In the end, Nelson gave up and decided to video the mosh for his Snapchat story instead.

A second crowd favourite was the Cubbers cover of Kanye West's Ultralight Beam, to which Nelson lent his pop tones. Reinventing a rap song felt especially applicable to the Cub Sport sound, as Nelson sounds reminiscent of '90s R&B in many of the band's own tracks.

Cub Sport offered a relatively short set with the crowd dancing from start to finish. Their choice of covers including This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) by Talking Heads laid their shiny synth and '80s revival influences bare.

Cub Sport are going from strength to strength and the Australian public are thirsty for more. Their penchant for catchy pop hooks, brilliant vocals and a carefully produced product are all key ingredients in the tune machine. This combo gives each track longevity and keeps them from sounding repetitive. The sound would fit in with '90s Aus pop, the ilk of Human Nature and Savage Garden, with a similar capacity for churning out belters. Expect to see a lot more of Tim Nelson and Cub Sport in the future.