When I saw the title of the new single and album from Florence and the Machine, I got excited. Unfortunately, it turned out that "What the Water Gave Me" wasn't a cover of the cub song of the same name... (no video but check the second song in)
http://youtu.be/HYnaEBiHisY
I have three bands I'm obsessive about and collect about everything I can get my hands on. The first is Elvis Costello, the second is Devo. The third is Vancouver's cub. Yes, the band is so cute that their name is spelled in lowercase. cub was a band from Vancouver, a trio of girls who came together to make a style of music called "cuddlecore", kind of a giddy, lo-fi garage rock style. Think The Ramones crossed with Hello Kitty and you get some of the idea. The two constants in the band were bassist and vocalist Lisa Marr and guitarist Robyn Iwata. They shifted drummers a few times, including a very young Neko Case, who is featured in the video for "Nicolas Bragg"
http://youtu.be/gUCdJHP_6Bg
Why cub? I suppose a couple of things attracted me to the band. At the time I heard them, music was very dark and gritty and angry. In 1992, the grunge movement was in full force and everything was loud and sludgy. cub was the anti-grunge band: cute, light, amateurish but not childish. They sounded like nothing else being made at the time. The band has the lo-fi garage aesthetic too. In fact, Robyn performed several early shows sitting on the stage, reading cheat sheets for the chords she needed to play. In the video for "My Chinchilla", you get a sense of what the band was doing. Very cute, very lo-fi, very real.
http://youtu.be/-u3fG2eJvCc
It also didn't hurt that the girls in the band were as cute as buttons. I still have an innocent dream of marrying one of them some day.
The band's first full-length album came out in 1993, Betti-Cola collected some of their earlier work, released on 7" vinyl, on the Mint label, where they spent their whole career and added some new tracks. The cover was illustrated by Archie Comics artist Don DeCarlo, which perfectly captured the bands playful nature.
Come Out, Come Out came out in 1994 and cemented their sound and their reputation in Canadian college radio, featuring their singles "Flaming Red Bobsled" and "New York City", which was later covered by legendary nerd-rockers They Might Be Giants.
http://youtu.be/jlx-pvUfuk0
http://youtu.be/lRL9C5cttcI
By 1996, the band had started to lose it's way a bit. Box of Hair wasn't a bad album by any stretch of the imagination, but it didn't exactly sound like cub. Check out the video for "Freaky" and see the change in look for the band. Lots of hairspray and dark makeup, a heavier approach to the music and a bit too much sexuality. The album does feature one of my favourite tracks though with "Pillow Queen"
http://youtu.be/lrTxV5eMB20
cub broke up in 1996, but Lisa and Robyn went on to other projects. Lisa Marr formed a band called Buck that put out one album, then she moved to Los Angeles and released music under the Lisa Marr Experiment, as well as recording an album with Kim Shattuck of the Muffs under the name The Beards. Robyn Iwata changed her stage name to Cup and formed a San Francisco/Vancouver based electronic band called I am Spoonbender, who have released several well-received albums. Drummer Lisa G is still retired from music as far as I know. The band's last release as cub came as a b-sides compilation in 1997 called Mauler, which was released on a small Australian label called Au-Go-Go Records.
http://youtu.be/dQxox6OS_Vc
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