The Losers Club Is Keeping Pop Punk Weird

Pop punk isn’t dead in Denver. There's a mainstream resurgence of the style, which dominated pop culture in the late 1990s and early 2000s. And The Losers Club, a duo of guitarist Cass Braido and bassist Tristin Pounders, is keeping it alive locally, playing music inspired by the big bands of the subgenre's heyday, such as Green Day and Blink-182.

Named for the clique of outcasts at the center of Stephen King’s It, the Losers Club recently returned from New York, where Pounders and Braido recorded a new EP. There, the two were  “immersed in the process of [recording], waking up every day going to the studio to record, then repeating that," Pounders says.

The Losers Club plans to release a single a month beginning in February. In the meantime, the band will play the Midwest Midfest, presented by Coastless Creatives, along with hellocentral, Gestalt and Horse Bitch. The local pop-punk show happens tonight, Friday, February 17, at HQ; Braido and Pounders agree that such gigs are always a good time

“Playing pop punk [is] a really good reason or excuse to be as loud as you want, and be a little bit reckless and wild and get applauded for that. In your day-to-day life, that’s not quite acceptable. It’s a little bit of an escape,” Pounders says. “If we were playing acoustic rock or something, it would be an entirely different vibe. For Cass and me, we have fun being up on stage just in general, dancing back and forth, and it fits well with the style of music being pop punk, because we can keep the rowdiness going.”

It's that attitude and energy paired with catchy melodies that has always made the subgenre fun, and a bit irreverent.

“I think the attractiveness to pop punk is probably the emphasis on pop. We’ve always agreed that it’s got to have a melody. ... We don’t want to get up there and have, like, a nine-minute jam and play all these chord progressions,” Braido adds. “It’s always been like, ‘Fuck that — let’s make a song that maybe people want to sing with us.’

"Being a bad singer, we can use any help we can get," he adds, laughing. "The punk part is you get to be loud and a little borderline sometimes. It just kind of works. That’s how we are as people: punk. Because fuck it, who cares?”

Not being able to play as many live shows over the past few years hasn’t really hurt the duo. As Braido puts it, venues only recently reopening to regular-capacity crowds was “sort of advantageous for us, because we were also getting our wheels underneath us. We got to use [the pandemic] as an excuse.”

The Losers Club is known to get “a little weird” and “raunchy” on stage, according to Pounders, which gives the duo’s concerts a vibe similar to Blink-182's The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (The Enema Strikes Back!).

“The clothes might come off; that has happened sometimes,” Braido says. “It’s probably the rowdiest karaoke party you’ve ever been to.”

“Crowd engagement” includes “impromptu” tunes sung by an unsuspecting audience member, so if you’ve ever wanted to be in a pop-punk band, find your way to the front of the stage.

“We just make people sing shit and start playing to it. It’s a punk show, quasi-stand-up routine,” Braido says.

Sometimes the band might even break into a David Lee Roth ditty.

“It’s not just about the music that we’re playing when we’re playing. That’s obviously a big part of it, but it’s a whole entire show, so there’s more to the show than just the music,” Pounders adds. “If you like watching people embarrass themselves on stage, this might be a show for you.”

The Losers Club, 8 p.m. Friday, February 17, HQ, 60 South Broadway. Tickets are $18.