Nostalgically Speaking
"No nostalgia!" Dylan Baldi screams, in his eternally-cracked voice, and the irony hangs as heavy as the crunchy, alt-rock guitars. Because Baldi —the Cleveland kid who leads Cloud Nothings— makes music indivisible from nostalgia, his ragged indie-rock steeped in the sounds of alternative yore.
On Cloud Nothing's self-titled 2011 LP, Baldi bashed out a series of short, fast, fuzzy, buzzy jams drawing from the ’80s American hardcore era that predated his 1991 birth, and the bubblegum-punk he was reared on as a kid. There was a genuine sense of both novelty —the first hipster on the block to bring back Blink-182!— and of being part of a greater cultural movement, with '90s revivalism on the rise.
A '90s of a Different Stripe
The second Cloud Nothings' record, Attack On Memory, shows, in no uncertain terms, that Baldi is a revivalist; a student of the Our Band Could Be Your Life era of American music. The fact that he's employed Steve Albini to 'record' the album is telling; as does the fact that he's citing Bitch Magnet as an influence.
This time around, see, the '90s revivalism is of a different stripe. The straight-ahead punk-pop sound has largely —save for the buoyant "Stay Useless" and the harmonious "Fall In"— been ditched, in favor of jams more angular, austere, more menacing, more 'out'. "Wasted Days" sprawls on for nine minutes, guitars scraping and Baldi screaming ("I thought I would be more than this!") in a furious furore of noisy, nasty klang; the songsmith exploring the dogged persistence of regret as the song spirals out, Sonic Youth-style.
A Student of the Past
Opener "No Future/No Past" effectively sets the tone for the change-of-pace: the very first few notes of Attack On Memory are played on a piano. The half-speed jam stalks through its one-finger ivory motif with a loud, attack-driven bass part that speaks of a specific strain of influence: post-hardcore/proto-post-rock outfits like Bitch Magnet, Slint, and Rodan lingering in each ring note, as the tune ratchets the intensity up until striking with thunderous cymbal splashes and guttural groans amidst the crest of a quiet-to-loud storm.
"No Sentiment" carries a similar sound —drums smashed, guitars agitato, tone aggressive— and a similar sentiment. Both songs are about the passage of time, and find Baldi both critiquing the industry of nostalgia and lamenting the endless pursuit of the new; "No Sentiment" —for all the irony of its "no nostalgia" line— damning those who choose not to learn from the past. A sentiment not surprising from this studious alt-rock scholar.
Record Label: Carpark
Release Date: January 24, 2012
