Score: 4/10
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Well, I’m no expert or anything, but I was pretty sure this new Cloud Nothings album was gonna be LOUD, so I sat around until just after noon to listen to it, in observance of my lodging neighbors next door and the Bukowski rule (never get up before noon) [1].
The last Cloud Nothings album was loud. The Cloud Nothings album before that was loud. This new Cloud Nothings album is loud. This band is a shoe-in for most likely band to produce a loud album.
Well, it always worked in the past, so why in taking in this new project do I just get the overwhelming sense that this band isn’t trying anymore, like they’ve taken in too much praise and adulation, like they’re entirely overly confident in their own time-worn strategy of making music? It’s possible that this indie post-hardcore shtick were more ORIGINAL in the early part of this decade, before Iceage and Plague Vendor, and when most indie bands were trying to funnel their sensitive sides (even No Age had considerably mellowed out for Everything in Between).
Now, God, this stuff just seems so incredibly cliché, one more group of men heroically, poetically mad at Donald Trump (Cloud Nothings are American, hailing from Cleveland, excuse me), and what’s more acting like punk still EXISTS in a true sense, which is almost more nauseating than anything – track two “Leave Him Now” reminds me pretty much exactly of Wire or Killing Joke. “In Shame” trots defiantly down that same path and, while I have to compliment singer Dylan Baldi on pretty much always sounding like a John Deere tractor but never seeming to get sick of what he does, this isn’t exactly music I need now, in any way. It’s really disappointing to hear this band persist in attempting to imbue PUNK in all of our systems, as if it’s still 1988, but what’s more, most of the grey masses being lifeless enough to actually lap it up.
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[1] Yeah I’m having an off day today, clearly.