Claud’s “Super Monster” is a catchy album of love songs—songs that basically address every possible point of perspective in the arc of relationships: having crushes, hooking up, being deeply in love, growing apart, saying goodbye. On “Overnight,” the first song, Claud sings about their feelings for their crush finally being realized, and the specifics here are so good. “You and me/at the pizza place/after the party/ended way late/I thought that you would never finish/the slice on your plate/but then you leaned in/and the nerves went away.” Followed by a sighing chorus of “All the time spent with you in my head/turned into things that we finally did.”
“Super Monster” captures so much of the intensity of feeling you experience when you’re young, meeting new people all the time, every weekend a series of charged possibilities. The debut album from Forth Wanderers also captured a similar vibe of vivid emotions and new experiences.
Most of the songs on “Super Monster” involve Claud tenderly speaking in direct address to their friends, lovers, exes, and enemies (on “That’s Mr. Bitch To You”), and one of the best is “Soft Spot,” where Claud sings about mistakenly thinking they saw an ex at a party, and then proceeds to do a kind of post-mortem on the relationship. The kind of shit that pops into your head after it’s all over, but you’re still holding on a little bit: “I wish I left all my things at your place so I could come get thеm/We’d do things we might regrеt and say that we could make exceptions/I just can’t take the rejection/Maybe I’m just second guessing.” “Super Monster” is all like this, really well observed love songs, full of catchy melodies.