The loud psych-pop group Sun Club, which originally started as the youthful high school project of neighbors, officially became a band in April 2012. Exactly five years later, the Baltimore-based band has sadly announced that Sun Club will be no more, and that they are breaking up.
The quintet, originally consisting of Mikey Powers (vocals, guitar), Shane McCord (vocals, guitar), Devin McCord (drums), Kory Johnson (multi-instrumentalist), and Adam Shane (bass), started almost ten years ago as a teenage project in the McCord brothers’ basement. The two brothers and their neighbor, Powers, originally played metal music, but when they added Johnson in 2010, they evolved into grunge and eventually into pop with the final addition of Shane in 2012.
In August 2013, Sun Club independently released their first music, a 7-inch called Beauty Meat/Language Juice. They quickly followed this up in the beginning of 2014 with their first EP, Dad Claps At The Mom Prom.
With the release of their first music, Sun Club immediately showed their signature sound. They ran with the sonic experimentation of early Animal Collective, but still maintained many of their roots in 2000s DIY metal, punk, and grunge. They perfected this signature sound with the release of their first full-length record, The Dongo Durango in October 2015 via ATO Records. Listen to the album in full here.
What this record offered was a vessel for people like me to leave their DIY rock phase behind and learn to love and appreciate pop music again. I first saw, or should I say attempted to see, Sun Club back in May 2015 at The Pike Room at The Crofoot Ballroom in Pontiac, MI. They were on tour supporting Fat White Family. The quintet got on stage and, after several minutes spent attempting to fix a problem with Powers’ guitar pedal, didn’t get to play. I was devastated; I had come to see this band play after discovering their Audiotree live set. After they came off stage, I went to tell them how much I loved their music. They were very approachable and hilarious and ended up giving my friend and I some t-shirts. The five members of Sun Club were exactly like their music: Humorous and optimistic, yet genuine and seriously talented.
After The Dongo Durango came out, Sun Club headlined their own tour and came back to Michigan, this time to the UFO Factory in Detroit in April of last year. I finally got to see them play and it was one of the most raw, experimental, and cohesive sets I have ever seen a band play. The energy that these five had together was amazing; after playing together for so many years, they could improvise and mess around with their live set while still maintaining the core elements of their strategically-written pop songs.
Sun Club had the incredible ability to incorporate their humorous personalities into their loud and fast songs, with optimistic hooks and ghoul-like screams. Yet, beneath the surface were lyrics filled with pain, self-doubt, and insecurity that easily resonated with their listeners. The video for “Tropicoller Lease,” their most popular song, is a perfect example of this paradox. Watch below.
In August of this past year, Sun Club announced that their bassist, Shane, would be parting from the band due to creative differences. Since the start of 2017, four-piece hasn’t been very active and, today, they finally announced their final departure from the project via Facebook:
thank you so much to everyone who has supported us in the past few years, it’s been absolutely insane! we’ve achieved all of our original goals we had in mind when younger, tour europe, tour with other bands as the support, release an album on a real label, play bonnaroo, play a KEXP, see the USA front and back 100+ times. This is has truly been an amazing experience and we thank you all for supporting it, from the bottom of our hearts. we will definitely cherish this experience forever.
The band also announced that they will continue working with their other projects, telling fans to “keep your eyes peeled for new albums from them in the next few months.” These projects include Albert Bagman, Abraxas, and Blud. Perhaps Shane McCord will continue his solo work with Gaarth Majesty. Watch his video for “greetings // all my friends are growing up” below.
McCord repeats on this hazy track, “all my friends are growing up and cleaning up. I don’t wanna grow up or clean up.” Well, it looks like Sun Club is, unfortunately, growing up and cleaning up from their teenage-rooted project.
Sun Club will play their last show on May 11 at the Rock & Roll Hotel in Washington, DC. Get tickets here.
