The Nile Club Releases New Album

The Nile Club. Photo by The Nile Club.

Last July, a band going by the name Big Splash & The Rats took to the stage at Cactus Club and noisily ripped through a 15-minute set with paper bags over their heads. No one had ever heard of the band before — it was the group’s debut appearance.

But Big Splash & The Rats isn’t actually a band – or at least not one that lived past that night. Underneath those paper-bag personas were the members of The Nile Club, a Milwaukee indie-punk group that has recently begun making a splash in the local music scene.

To understand what kind of band The Nile Club is, it’s important to acknowledge that the band’s stint as Big Splash & The Rats is actually an extension of one of the band’s rituals — to give each member an hour to write music, and then record what, according to guitarist and vocalist Sam Walters, are “a bunch of bullshit songs that actually sound kind of cool.” These rituals are just for fun, and those songs are never really promoted as canonical material from the band.

At times, The Nile Club is a noisy post-punk band. Other times, the band ventures into jangly indie-rock territory. Watching the band perform live, you almost wonder if any of the performance was planned ahead at all – as if the members of the band are somehow flawlessly improvising each song. It’s a ton of fun, and the band has managed to capture that energy and translate its infectious live performances to its new album Wake Up With a Sense of Pride.

The Nile Club started as a long-distance band, with members living in both West Bend and Sun Prairie. Drummer Samwise Baker, keyboardist Malachai Devlin, guitarist Marcie Star and Walters met in high school, and have been uploading music onto Bandcamp together since 2017. The band’s name was inspired by what some of the members saw on their drive to the group’s practice space – an abandoned supper club in Beaver Dam previously known as The Nile Club.

Eventually, the band decided to move to Milwaukee – partly to pursue post-high-school education, but mostly to be involved in a larger and more diverse music scene. With the addition of Jack Lusk on bass, the band’s current lineup was solidified. Moving to Milwaukee not only gave the band more appropriate opportunities for playing out (they played mostly county-fair-type shows), but hardened the band’s sound as well.

“… moving to Milwaukee and interacting with the bands here who seemed to learn more into punk and hardcore a bit — we picked that up when we came here,” says Walters. “They’re really energetic and we’ve got to match that now. We started playing faster, louder, noisier stuff, and it bled into the new album.”

That energy is apparent right out of the gate on the Wake Up With a Sense of Pride. The first track, “Black Knight,” starts with nonsensical lyrics but has grown to be an “eat the rich” anthem. There’s a recurring cacophony of shouting that serves as the chorus, and an ominous delivery to the actual lyrics.

“Black Knight” seamlessly transitions into “Ob-Long,” a much tamer indie bop about a fictional character that is representative of the band’s personal struggles. The happy-go-lucky omnipresent guitar riff and overall delivery of the song offset lyrics like “He’s stressing/Stretching himself out/Pulling at the strings inside of his soul.” The song builds up to a massive guitar solo, as if the character of Ob-Long is finally able to get it all off of his chest. With these first two tracks, we’re shown that The Nile Club can do the noisy punk dance, but also the flashy rock-and-roll showmanship.

On “Dragon Bone,” Star’s trumpet playing takes the spotlight, and the band wears its Neutral Milk Hotel influences on its sleeve with a colossal finale that makes it hard to believe there are only five members in the band. Later, “Burnt Young Man” manages to be both somber and groovy at the same time, and almost ascends to an operatic heavy metal sound in its climax complete with fuzzed-out guitar riffs and haunting synth lines.

The album concludes with “No Forgives,” an ode to starting over with a clean slate. Walters sings, “And I’m off to the brew city/I’ll find my own way home/And I don’t need nobody to save me/Movin’ to the city on my own.” The listener ends their time with The Nile Club where their Milwaukee story begins — meaning that the overall tale of the band is told backwards through the album, considering we get the album’s most unhinged and energetic effort — channeling Milwaukee’s punk scene — right away with “Black Knight.”

“I wrote that one … basically just feeling like I couldn’t really trust my feelings and I couldn’t really decipher what was real and what was just my brain or whatever,” says Walters. “That one got a lot noisier and darker and heavier and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.”

Wake Up With a Sense of Pride is an album where if someone were to draw a Venn diagram of alternative Milwaukee music, the album’s circle would land somewhere close to the middle, overlapping so many of the sub-genres that come with discussing indie and punk music. Perhaps it’s indicative of the effect that moving to Milwaukee has had on the band. But more likely is the fact that The Nile Club has always belonged here – and that Milwaukee’s music scene has allowed the band to tap into its full potential. None of these songs sound out of place, and they’re all executed in a way that feels authentic.

Wake Up With a Sense of Pride is an album about growth — and at times an angry one. But whether the band is performing an improvised set with bags over their heads, or performing actual songs from their discography, it’s apparent that The Nile Club revels in fun and organized chaos. Growth can be difficult and confusing, but making the most of it and having fun along the way makes everything easier.

That sentiment is reflected in The Nile Club’s answer when pressed about what kind of club the band is.

“We’re a cult — we do goat sacrifices,” Star says with a laugh. “(But really) … we just play Dark Souls and drink beer.”