Lights are dim at the back of the midtown Reno bar where the four members of Werewolf Club gather and laugh recalling the road to putting out their full length album.
“I learned how to play keyboard in this band. Before this I was in a Black Sabbath cover band,” vocalist Steve Storm chortles with an infectiously loud laugh.
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After having been together for around 7 years, the band’s first full length record layers neon-infused electronics over fever dream lyrics with the result being a dynamically dance sound drenched in the aura of the town’s nighttime streets.
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Too well-crafted to be lo-fi, Werewolf Club has put out a number of singles followed by an EP prior to the release of the full length. Like a dancey sci fi soundtrack bathed in reverb on a rainy night, the band’s sound could score an indie film as much as it can fill a dive bar dance floor with euphorically sweaty bodies.
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The release of the band’s self-titled 8-song full length ultimately came as the final pieces of a jigsaw puzzle encompassing different physical locations, studio set ups, and reworked compositions fell into place.
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“There were a lot of places where we recorded specific parts. One of them was Lake Tahoe, another was our old [Reno] apartment,” bassist Steven Corder describes the group’s tendencies to work together in varying environments. “There’s nothing that was fleshed out without all of our input.”
On the group’s lyrics, Storm says that even this is open to collaboration until arriving at something everyone is happy with.Â
“Maybe Steven will write a chorus and I’ll write a verse. It will be fragmented, it’ll have different meanings to each of us, but it’s what works for us.”
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A subtly sizzling electronic tone with Johnny Marr-like guitar loops over bass lines that ooze a certain intoxicated sexiness, the album opens with the song “Signals” before fading into the cinematic Mojave Desert car chase montage feeling of “Too Little, Too Late”. A certain lyrical ambiguousness threads its way throughout the songs.
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“Nothing was off limits,” Matthew Hatjakes says of the group’s collaborative approach to creating the songs. “If I had an opinion on the bass line or Steve had an opinion on the drum line…” he describes in explaining how each Werewolf Club song is ultimately a group arrival.
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Admittedly the band has a unique sound, particularly within the smaller but burgeoning Reno scene. Though in a city where an atmosphere of 24 hour city streets illuminated by flickering neon lights of decades-past-their-prime casinos and storefronts, the sound doesn’t seem so out of place.
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“Back then it was only bar shows. It’s interesting to see how the scene evolved,” Matthew mentions of growing up when the small city was even smaller. “Then there were a lot of basement shows. Now you can go on social media and see that there are thousands of people following accounts like the Holland Project [venue], who are interested in music. When we started this project, and even now, there wasn’t anybody similar to us.” Though what results is a lot of mutual support amongst those playing music in Reno.
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The band laughs a bit talking about their sound, in a way boiling Werewolf Club down to a few essential elements of inventiveness in the face of limitations and a sense of waiting until the pieces eventually fit into place correctly, regardless of how long it takes.
“We were always really broke. We’d record at our practice space,” Storm says.
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Jonathan Hatjakes, the group’s drummer, produced and mixed the album, working and reworking the sound along the way until the band was excited with it.
“There were two songs we really felt good about,” Jonathan says of the ultimate point of arriving at the full length, “and we decided to rewrite parts of some of the others until we ended up with a record that we’re really proud of.”