Clubhouse Release 'Are We Going Too Slow?' EP

Feel-good indie-pop outfit Clubhouse have released Are We Going Too Slow? - a deeply intimate collection of songs, written and recorded while frontman Max Reichert battled bone cancer.

Alongside the EP, out via AWAL, the band has released "Home Videos," an anthem to naïve, young love, which Clubhouse created as "a reminder that there's a little kid still inside all of us, and it's okay to act like one sometimes".

Are We Going Too Slow?, as well as the singles - "Heartbroke," "Weekend," "Flipside," "NO WAY!" and "Home Videos" - were released after an unexpected, year-long pause. Despite successfully building a cult following, gathering millions of streams, and sharing the stage with HAIM, Bastille, and Young The Giant, Clubhouse saw the certainty of their future, or any future, in jeopardy, as Max battled cancer.

"We've been adopting the motto, carpe diem, and going after what we want to go after," reflects Reichert, adding, "if something's not serving you, life is too short to try to make it work."

That ability to zoom in on making the most of the present without questioning if they are going too slow hasn't always been a given for the members of Clubhouse.

"The whole life-is-too-short thing really smacked us in the face," drummer Zak Blumer shares. "I feel like I finally know the answer," he adds, while reflecting on the EP's central query and title. "We're going at just the right speed. We're doing it with our brothers, and if we keep making music we like and doing it at the pace we feel is right, it'll be just right."

Zak, alongside his twin brother and guitarist Ari Blumer, rallied around their lifelong friend Max, who they have been connected to since they were just 8-years-old, first, as soccer teammates and then as bandmates, as he underwent chemo and multiple surgeries.

Alongside keyboardist Forrest Taylor and bassist Michael Berthold, the Los Angeles by way of Ohio five-piece, kept going, visiting Max in the hospital with their laptops, showing him new beats, and getting his feedback on melodies.

After everything they've been through, the answer to the question "are we going too slow?" fluctuates day to day for Clubhouse. In the end, it would be Max's health battle and the band's subsequent awareness of the brevity of time, that led them to create the intimate, feel-good collection of songs that "serve as reminders to ourselves that the focus should be on happiness," Max says.

Listen to the new EP here:

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