In 2022, Night Club wowed San Antonio fans during its opening slot for Puscifer at the Boeing Center. Credit: Courtesy Photo / Night Club

Music duo Night Club’s aesthetic may be best summed up by a chorus from its 2020 LP Die Die Lullaby: “I want to die in the disco.”

The electronic goth-pop act’s blend of darkness and danceability isn’t just summed up pithily in its own work, it’s caught the ear of alt-rock icon Maynard Keenan (Tool, A Perfect Circle, Puscifer). Keenan appears on the track “Gone” from Night Club’s new LP, Masochist, and he’s tapped the duo open for both Puscifer and A Perfect Circle.

In 2022, Night Club wowed San Antonio fans during its opening slot for Puscifer at the Boeing Center. While the act may have been new to many in attendance, its high-energy stage presence, catchy vocal melodies and driving synth sounds won over plenty of new fans.

Now touring as a headliner, Night Club will fire up the Danse Macabre at San Antonio’s Paper Tiger on Tuesday, May 7. Rosegarden Funeral Party and JPEG will open.

We recently caught up with Night Club vocalist Emily Kavanaugh on Zoom. She checked in from Henderson, Nevada — just outside Las Vegas — where the band is now based. It was formed in LA in 2012.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Your music is often described as “darkwave” — you know the kids and their crazy microgenres. Would you agree with that characterization? And how do you define darkwave?

Honestly, I have no fucking clue what we are. I think people just like to put labels on things. We’ve been described as retrowave,’80s, ’90s, 2000s, dark pop, goth-pop. I don’t pay much attention to labels. Just listen and call it whatever you want. I don’t know what darkwave means, to be honest. I don’t know what any of it means. (Laughs.)

The music has an early ’80s vibe. I think that’s partly the directness of the riffs. It’s not busy, it’s not a lot of notes. Would you agree?

Definitely. Mark [Brooks] — the other half of the band — he’s older than me. He grew up primarily in the ’80s and ’90s, and that’s a lot of his influences. He’s the producer. We write everything together, but he is ultimately the producer, and he’s responsible for a lot of the actual sounds on the record. He is definitely influenced by Gary Numan. That comes through.

You toured extensively with Puscifer, and Maynard Keenan is on the new record. Seems like he’s a big fan of Night Club. What does he like so much about you?

You’d have to ask him. I have no idea! (Laughs.)

What a dodge.

I honestly don’t know. I think maybe there’s a part of him that likes that it’s so unlike his bands that he’s in. I know he loves the ’80s. Devo is one of his favorite bands. He loves electronic music, and it’s just so different than Tool. Different than APC. Different than Puscifer. Maybe that’s a little refreshing to him, I’m not sure. But he’s a man of few words. He doesn’t explain to you why he likes a certain kind of music, but I can only assume that he likes catchy pop music.

How does Mark define his role in the band? Is he a DJ? A one-man band behind the console?

I think he considers himself a keyboardist-producer. I don’t think he would say a DJ per se. He’s part of the band. He plays keyboards and he mixes live, and he does all the tracks. They’re all separated, and he mixes everything to the room that we’re in. He’s a full band member up there. He’s playing, he’s mixing, he’s doing it all.

Electronic and modern acts have really redefined the idea of what a band can be.

Yes. Agreed. We’re aware that we’re a two-piece, and two-pieces don’t typically have a lot of energy on stage, just because of a lack of human beings. I tend to overcompensate by moving around a lot and being energetic and running around and bringing energy to it that I feel like a lot of duos don’t typically have. Electronic duos anyway.

Do you know how to play keyboard?

Yeah. I’m not a virtuoso keyboardist and neither is [Mark]. We write everything together, 50-50, from the moment that we sit down and write. I’ll come up with a bassline or he’ll come up with a bassline, and we kinda just work from there. It’s very collaborative. A lot of people online seem to think he does all the music. He’s the guy who does the music and the girl is the, maybe, lyricist. She sings on his music. Which is the perception a lot of the time that I’m trying to break a little bit. Frontgirls are writing, too. It’s very collaborative. We do it all together. He’ll write lyrics. It’s not just me writing lyrics. He writes lyrics. It’s extremely 50-50. And he’s definitely responsible for, I would say, the sounds of the synths, and the final arrangements. But definitely songwriting is both of us.

$20, 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 7, Paper Tiger, 2410 N. St. Mary’s St., papertigersatx.com.

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This article appears in May 1-14, 2024.