Aesthetically the Republik doesn’t offer much in the way of interior eye candy. The club occupies the old Victoria’s barely ventilated, multilevel space and the relaunch didn’t seem to involve much more than opening the doors: All elements, including the paint colour, seems to be the same. Heck, the Victoria’s sign is still there.

There’s roughly four different rooms, each playing a variety of indie rock, indie electronic and indie hip-hop music (also known as “angst-a rap”) with no DJ to be found – which makes sense for a joint that wants to be Calgary’s next prime live indie music venue.

If any change was evident, compared to the old Republik which was kind of dirty, this new rendition is marginally cleaner. But, the 18-25 year old, skinny-jeans-wearing university crowd seems to be comfortably sliding into it like a rediscovered old hoody. As with the studios that continue to pump out remakes of movies, in order to make the thing work, they need to retain the spirit of the original while bringing something new to the table. If the Republik can juggle the “new” with the “retro, then we might have a new legend. Again.