Now We're Cookin'

About

Polish Club was somehow able to conjure up so much creative energy throughout the pandemic that they wrote 90 songs during the 2020 lockdown. They came in three batches: The Sydney pair—Dave Novak and John-Henry Pajak—first wrote 30 songs that didn’t quite hit the mark. It all sounded a little better the second time around, and by the third, they’d found their groove—and the drive to write straight-up hits, regardless of genre or influence. In some ways, it’s a response to having been pigeonholed as a rock band because they play guitar. In other ways, they just really like pop and R&B. So they had a go at writing some themselves. They started chipping away at their creations, honing them down to only the biggest hooks and the best melodies, eventually reaching the final 10 tracks that form <i>Now We’re Cookin’</i>. There’s no less guitar than on their first two albums, but the broader range of sounds and musical references is exciting and unpredictable—a welcome intentional shift against categorization. What’s more, for every exciting new feel, influence, and production style, there’s a message, an argument, a pointed finger. Opener “Stop for a Minute” is wistful and deeply opinionated: “Tell me why you’re surprised all your heroes end up being fucking monsters,” Novak sings. “I know that the bassline hits hard/But he’s singing ’bout women as pawns.” It’s followed by the deep disco and high falsetto of “New Age,” a song that sounds brighter than it is—“Heartbreak, cashflow, headache general lows/Just try, don’t die, maintain the flow, climb from the low.” The heavy, percussive “Whack” is aggressive in its message of tolerance: “Why the hell you judge someone for science, culture, race?/Talking, talking, talking just to justify your place/So what's the point of all this shouting into the night?/'Cause no one's tryna take you on.” And don’t let the gentle, coolly sentimental melody of closer “Fuck Off & Die” encroach on the intent outlined by its title: “Why don’t you just fuck off and die?/You’re like a needle through my eye,” Novak sings, ending the album on a note that, despite sounding sweet, is anything but: "Made up reports we can’t deny, oh, your dollar travels more than mine/We don’t have those pretty things, we don’t have to make this ugly/So won’t you be the first to leave.”

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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