The Weekend Run Club
Photo by Tracy Conoboy
Right before venues across the country shuttered, The Weekend Run Club played a sold-out show at the Beat Kitchen in their hometown of Chicago. Feeding off the band’s infectious energy, palpable heartbreak, and undeniable wanderlust seems like a pipe dream without their live set. For now, why don’t you enter Zoo, the four-piece’s proper debut?
Zoo’s main creature features meet at the intersection of lost love and misshapen identity, where vocalist Mitchell Jay (he/they) unravels character sketches across a cityscape that evolves as confessions are made and bonds are changed. “Rhode Island” travels through the colors of all four seasons but lands on the unmistakable shimmer of summer nights, late night drives made limitless by urgent instrumentals. “Casually Dancing” catalogs a month of Sundays, where bassist Haley Blomquist (she/her), guitarist Joey Resko (he/him), and drummer Bridget Stiebris (she/her) are at their most frenetic and unpredictable while the gang fumbles to reluctantly get ready for noon mass. Even the double feature of “Sometimes” and “Let’s Think Back” have such a hunger for openness that the album’s January 2020 street date feels awfully premature for something so deeply universal.
With delirious guitar solos tearing the ceiling off alt-rock structures shocked by danceable rhythms, the Weekend Run Club combines the endurance of dance floor anthems with the identity crises that follow a night on the town—or a quiet night in.
- James Cassar
