Pitchfork
August 11, 2010
Link
5.4
There's no statute of limitations on grieving the loss of an infant child. For Craig and Connie Minowa, the 2002 death of two-year-old son Kaidin was enough to force a year-long separation. This bereavement also fueled the most cathartic moments of the Cloud Cult albums Craig would later record, in a geothermal-powered studio, at the couple's small, northern Minnesota organic farm. Happily, the Minowas are now celebrating a new addition to the growing Cloud Cult family-- baby boy Nova-- and their band is experiencing something of a rebirth, too.
Cloud Cult's eighth proper album follows the No One Said It Would Be Easy band-doc DVD last year and three recent reissues of this self-released collective's early-2000s output, including 2004's staggeringly expansive Aurora Borealis. Any fan who knows those releases won't be surprised by Light Chasers, which stretches Cloud Cult's hippie-Arcade-Fire sprawl into "a concept album that interweaves stories focused on the exploration of the mysteries of the universe, life and death." Many of you will probably stop reading at this point; the rest of you should know that Light Chasers improves on 2008's Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes) by focusing on what Cloud Cult do best, though it lacks the colorful songwriting and hooky inventiveness of the band's most endearing songs. It'll still probably be fun live.
Cloud Cult's usual combination of wiry guitars, earnest yawps, swaying orchestration, bustling drums, and occasional keyboards or electronics returns on Light Chasers, with the addition of ex-Tapes 'n Tapes-er Shawn Neary on bass. Unfortunately, all this overwroughtness-- overwroughtitude?-- has come to feel slightly rote: Note extended song titles like "The Contact (Journey to the Light p. 5)" (the exact track listing varies between the back of the CD case, liner notes, and CDDB online data). Still, this combination of the building blocks for epic, millennial indie rock remains fairly potent in Cloud Cult's hands, particularly on multiple-personality piano stomper "Room Full of People in Your Head". Unplugging it a little, "The Baby (You Were Born)" is a wide-eyed acoustic ballad that, like John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy" before it, can seem moving or saccharine depending on your frame of mind. With no breaks between songs, you have to wade through various interludes and self-help asides to find this stuff, but that's part of the fun of a Cloud Cult record. These guys have always been a little different.
In fact, like jam bands or certain dance music, Cloud Cult's music is ultimately almost ceremonial in nature. Note subtitles like "The Invocation p. 1 (You'll Be Bright)" or "The Lessons (Exploding People)", for crissakes, or the Rapture-ous (and not even the band!) cover art. So if the howls and panting that open advance mp3 "Running With the Wolves" strike you as a little too on the nose, the judgment-day prophecy of "The Acceptance (Responsible)" as too preachy, or the (unfortunately) robot-voiced aphorisms of "The Surrender (Guessing Game)" as too, um, robotically aphoristic, then try to imagine the fervor of the live experience. There, the swirl of ecstatic sound-- and the presence of two live painters-- can be powerful, a sort of live secular devotional music that is ambitiously off in its own world. Anybody who releases an Earth Day EP or pays extra to have their CD packaging made out of recycled material probably isn't in it only for the money, but they're not exactly pure aesthetes, either. Give them your 10 bucks, you won't feel bad about it, just buy their back catalog first.
Cloud Cult's eighth proper album follows the No One Said It Would Be Easy band-doc DVD last year and three recent reissues of this self-released collective's early-2000s output, including 2004's staggeringly expansive Aurora Borealis. Any fan who knows those releases won't be surprised by Light Chasers, which stretches Cloud Cult's hippie-Arcade-Fire sprawl into "a concept album that interweaves stories focused on the exploration of the mysteries of the universe, life and death." Many of you will probably stop reading at this point; the rest of you should know that Light Chasers improves on 2008's Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes) by focusing on what Cloud Cult do best, though it lacks the colorful songwriting and hooky inventiveness of the band's most endearing songs. It'll still probably be fun live.
Cloud Cult's usual combination of wiry guitars, earnest yawps, swaying orchestration, bustling drums, and occasional keyboards or electronics returns on Light Chasers, with the addition of ex-Tapes 'n Tapes-er Shawn Neary on bass. Unfortunately, all this overwroughtness-- overwroughtitude?-- has come to feel slightly rote: Note extended song titles like "The Contact (Journey to the Light p. 5)" (the exact track listing varies between the back of the CD case, liner notes, and CDDB online data). Still, this combination of the building blocks for epic, millennial indie rock remains fairly potent in Cloud Cult's hands, particularly on multiple-personality piano stomper "Room Full of People in Your Head". Unplugging it a little, "The Baby (You Were Born)" is a wide-eyed acoustic ballad that, like John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy" before it, can seem moving or saccharine depending on your frame of mind. With no breaks between songs, you have to wade through various interludes and self-help asides to find this stuff, but that's part of the fun of a Cloud Cult record. These guys have always been a little different.
In fact, like jam bands or certain dance music, Cloud Cult's music is ultimately almost ceremonial in nature. Note subtitles like "The Invocation p. 1 (You'll Be Bright)" or "The Lessons (Exploding People)", for crissakes, or the Rapture-ous (and not even the band!) cover art. So if the howls and panting that open advance mp3 "Running With the Wolves" strike you as a little too on the nose, the judgment-day prophecy of "The Acceptance (Responsible)" as too preachy, or the (unfortunately) robot-voiced aphorisms of "The Surrender (Guessing Game)" as too, um, robotically aphoristic, then try to imagine the fervor of the live experience. There, the swirl of ecstatic sound-- and the presence of two live painters-- can be powerful, a sort of live secular devotional music that is ambitiously off in its own world. Anybody who releases an Earth Day EP or pays extra to have their CD packaging made out of recycled material probably isn't in it only for the money, but they're not exactly pure aesthetes, either. Give them your 10 bucks, you won't feel bad about it, just buy their back catalog first.
