Who wants to hear a nerdy thirty-something bragging about impressing soccer moms with his massage technique? Club Awesome thinks that maybe you do.

Dynamos, the band’s debut album, delivers a heavy dose of disco with a sugary sweet synth-pop coating. Side effects may include dizziness, headaches, and a strong desire to not listen to Club Awesome anymore. But for the disco-deficient, a spoonful of “Dynamos” might be the cure. Its rapid-fire cymbals and bouncy bass lines are right on point. The upstrokey guitars will get your head nodding. If keyboards and synthesizers are where you’re at, and if over-the-top sweater-vested vocalists are what you’re into, it just might do the trick.

The band’s uptempo, dancey rhythms coupled with shouty, often monotonous vocal melodies portray a sense of fashion-friendliness over genuine enthusiasm—an imbalance that is all too familiar among most of today’s pop bands. It just seems to me that a band called Club Awesome ought to be more about cutting loose and having fun than the band behind Dynamos seems to be. This lack of authenticity is most apparent in “When You Were Down,” the album’s closing track wherein the dance elements are removed completely and replaced by an acoustic guitar and a Marc Bolan falsetto that was seemingly included on the album as a buffer zone to lull the listener down gently into disinterested quietness, after a back-breakingly high-intensity disco session.

Hearing a guy singing like Kermit the Frog and lyricising about the tyranny of the Laissez-Faire isn’t as rewarding as I might have hoped, but there’s always a place for trendy dance music. While I generally try and stay very far away from those places, Club Awesome almost makes them somewhat inviting. The song “Something To Hold Onto” actually shows that the band has some promise as a doo-wop group, but the tricky thing about doo-wop is to not sound like a pussy when you’re playing it. Perhaps the band’s reputation as a high-energy live band doesn’t translate to the record, but that’s hardly an excuse for the record consistently flatlining.

Dynamos Take Two

by: Betsy

“Have you listened to the Club Awesome album yet?” Bradley asked me last week. “Yeah,” I grimaced, “it’s ok.” “Well, they’re not called Club OK,” he quipped. I rolled my eyes and changed the subject. Now, several listens later, this dialog still feels to me like a telling signpost toward my opinion of the record. They didn’t name themselves ‘Club OK,’ it’s true, and I think I know why. This band is all about razzle-dazzle, volume, and excitement.

I’ll harp on the technicalities for only a moment – the rough staccato of the vocals leave you with no choice but to turn off the part of your brain that knows anything about what a human voice is supposed to sound like. The way the music is written gives the guitarist little chance to breathe – to his credit, he manages to keep up, though with little emphasis on his part. The entirety of Dynamos is drowning in synthesizer, which may actually be its saving grace.

The truth is, I had one great moment with this album. My car was packed with people and Dynamos was in the stereo. Eight of us were making a two-car caravan from Star Bar to 529, and our ‘rival’ car pulled up next to us at a stoplight, blasting remixed Feist. I was able to counter it easily and drown out the Feist with Club Awesome and we all started dancing as wildly as my tiny car would allow. We left it at top volume till we reached the bar, and you know what? It was great fun.

Although this album is the musical equivalent of a cotton candy dinner, kids in clubs won’t care. I have no doubt that we’ll hear one or two of these tracks (my money’s on ‘White Tyger’) out on the town frequently for a while. Even though I don’t think much of the quality level displayed in the band’s debut, I’m still looking forward to seeing Atlanta-based Club Awesome live.