PEOPLE CLUB: ‘TAKE ME HOME’ EP REVIEW

People Club are a music collective, a la superorganism, based in Berlin. The band met through a craigslist ad and despite meeting in its capital, none of the band are from Germany. This mixture of inputs - ranging from Leeds to Sydney, gives the music a full and rich sound, breaking through constraints of traditional genres. 

‘Take Me Home’ utilises the best elements of slacker-jazz icons, Crumb: loose harmonies; tight snares; and soulful delivery. The songs manage to be contemporary, some having a 70s groove and sounds and textures from the 80s onwards. It's a seductive mix, immediately listenable. You can imagine the title track soundtracking a prom scene in Euphoria: all glitter and confidence.

Take Me Home is a great EP to play whilst hanging out with friends. It can take up as much space as you want it to, coexisting as both the kind of songs you’d Shazam in Urban Outfitters and something to really plug in and listen to. Particularly notable is the combination of big hooks with political messages on anti-police brutality track ‘Lay Down Your Weapons’. The chorus’s urgent plea of “lay down your weapons / lay down your weapons for me” has such insistent repetition that its point cannot be ignored. 

The songs were actually recorded back in 2019, when the world all felt ready for the taking and the tracks were earmarked for release in 2020. But, instead the band spent this unexpected period focusing on writing. If this is what they were capable of before the extra time, then I can’t imagine the scope of what’s next. This is a band who know its sound, one that may bring to mind Mac Demarco or St Etienne at times but only in passing: People Club are doing their own, sweet thing.