Release Date: April 19, 2024
Label: Pure Noise
Length: 29:00
Produced By: Jeff Zeigler
Rating: 7.8
Review by: Alexander Hellene
Highlights: “Daggers of Light,” “Running Through the Campus,” “Thank Me For Playing,” “Common Mistake”
You can tell a lot about a person’s politics by how they look. Science has backed this up—physiognomy is real, y’all. By this metric, Cloud Nothings frontman looks like the kind of person who’d respond to an earnest “Merry Christmas!” with a self-righteous lecture about how the sentiment is offensive to all the people who don’t celebrate the holiday while banging on about Christianity’s colonial legacy or whatever. And that’s probably accurate; the guy is dating Speedy Ortiz’s frontwoman Sadie Dupuis after all. Birds of a feather, etc. and so on. Further confirmation comes from one esteemed record review site’s take on “Silence,” a song in the middle of the band’s excellent eighth album Final Summer, saying that its lyrics “And you can make any heaven you want/Why do you blow out every little light/And live in the dark?” are directed at “the assorted bigots, fundamentalists, and climate-change deniers he addresses earlier on.”
Is that what Baldi is saying? You be the judge:
If there are no new ideas
Do you have any reason to learn
Why do you keep relying
On the man who said you should burn
This is an ancient terror
And I won't you see when it's gone
Another normal day
Another dying planet we're on
Is “the man who said you should burn” supposed to be Jesus? Maybe. I don’t know. “Another dying planet we’re on” might be about climate change. But it could be a metaphor. But where do bigots play into this? I think we learn more about the reviewer’s politics than the band’s in write-ups like this. I find Baldi’s lyrics on Final Summer refreshingly non-topical, typically doing what great artists do: make the personal universal. Further, the band, rounded out by bassist Chris Brown and drummer Jayson Gerycz play the kind of music that feels lab-grown to appeal to me.
This is the kind of stuff I tend to write, albeit mine has more guitar solos and time-signature changes (talk about learning more about the reviewer than the reviewee!) but I’m having difficulty being objective here. Had Cloud Nothings been around when I was in high school or college, I think they’d have become a personal favorite.
Mentioning those two academic periods in one’s life fits for the band: this is well-produced lo-fi indie rock that didn’t forget about the “rock” part like so many ass-achingly dull purveyors of the genre. The guitars, they are loud, the drums, they crash, and the bass, it is grindy and prominent. Reminds me of the 1990s, but the good parts. And the melodies, they are bittersweet. The band rips: Brown’s massive bass tone and Gerycz’s jittery drumming provides the perfect bed for Baldi’s compositions. Baldi has an appealing yelp that gets raw when he pushes his voice, and the production is atmospherically intimate the way, say, Weezer’s Pinkerton shot for, or the countless emo/screamo bands my buddies in college listened to, who all probably lifted that aesthetic from Pavement anyway.
But what’s more important than the sound? The songs, bro. And that’s where Cloud Nothings shine. They use the three-piece configuration—my personal favorite—and throw in enough curveballs to keep it interesting and, most importantly, unpredictable. Just when you think you know where a song is going, say opener “Final Summer,” the band does something else. Burbling synths and incessant hi-hat bring to mind Pink Floyd’s “On the Run,” but instead of melting down into a loping, bluesy mid-tempo jam, Cloud Nothings keep running, an uptempo motorik drumbeat and incessant riff carrying the sound through its twists and turns, including an atmospheric synth solo. I did not see that coming.
This is the beauty of Final Summer, the joy of what the band packs into these short bursts of indie pop punk. The melodies all have nice shapes, and Baldi chooses notes with his voice and guitar that rub against each other with such pretty dissonance. “Oh, I have some thoughts,” Baldi sings, “Oh, I have some dreams/But I need to be happy/With what I’ve got for me.” The last gasp of familiarity before leaving home, that last summer with your hometown sweetheart? The uncertainty of whether your dreamed-for life will come true? Bittersweet indeed.
Speaking of running, “Running Through the Campus” is about as on-the-nose as Baldi gets, a joyous love-letter to Baldi’s other favorite pass-time, running. Many of these songs have the tempo of a fast jog, stopping occasionally to catch your breath and see how far you’ve come. “I never run for anyone else/It's just a thing I do for myself.” A solitary exercise similar to, say, writing music, competing only with yourself.
It’s not all sunshine and blue skies, though. Cloud Nothings know how to tug the heartstrings with the savage melodicism of Huüsker Dü or prime Smashing Pumpkins. The melody to “Daggers of Light” has some unexpected notes that provide a touch of darkness to what would otherwise be another quasi-emo workout. “Mouse Policy” exemplifies the band’s use of the lost art of dynamics, going from off-beat heavy punk to a quieter outro with some nice build-ups in between. Brown drops out when Baldi sings firing “Thank Me For Playing,” a song whose furious guitar solo proves that Baldi’s got some chops. And closer “Common Mistake” might be the best of them all, so 90s in a good way. Baldi writes like a guy who was born in the 90s but imbibed the vibe via osmosis, that sense of bewilderment, of trying to make sense of things on your own with no adult supervision, because the grown-ups are still just as confused as you.
Not everything lands. “The Golden Halo” and the aforementioned “Silence” feel slightly half-written, though are too short and punchy to be offensive. And while the band does the “feedback squeal before bringing the noise” trick more than twice, the songwriting is generally so good you don’t even notice. A volume shift here, a chord out of left field there, and so much energy you wish the band sold it by the bottle.
So there you are. Want to learn more about me? Cloud Nothings is a band that I should hate on paper, but this is why we listen. This is a journey of discovery. So maybe I’m still a hipster even though I’m almost old enough to be these dudes’ father. Fine. Guilty as cheered. But I guess you can teach an old hipster new tricks—see, we don’t hate everything. Always be learning. All I can do is promise to call ‘em like I hear them.
90s UK-style indie landfill RETVRNS!
Couple of things about video though:
How do they forgive themselves for being so...white?
The drummer (Sam Hyde c. 2014) is wearing a Sachsenheim T-shirt, suggesting possible Transylvania connection. I must find a way to incorporate video into an article about pro-social, low time-preference traits of Transylvanian German merchant middle class.
Yay, I like indie bands that don't throw DEI in your face, even if the other site claims they do. Thanks for the review!