Thursday, February 21, 2013

Cloud Nothings - 2012 - Attack On Memory

Cloud Nothings are an indie rock band from Cleveland Ohio. Their latest album Attack On Memory is their third LP.This is the kind of guitar driven, moody, indie rock that I like. Cloud Nothings borrow heavily from garage, noise and punk wells which produce a boozy, hazy but still driven album. While it is front loaded the whole album comes together nicely so long as you have an appetite for noise and garage rock.

My three favourite songs, Wasted Days, Fall In and Stay Useless are the only parts of this album I keep coming back to. Those three songs, aside from the noise interlude in Wasted Days, are all excellent songs that bear up to repeating. Seperation, which comes immediately after the previously mentioned tracks, is an excellent instrumental but lacks some of the visceral hooks of it's predecessors.

My main problem with this album are the slow burn and noise elements. Sometimes I like noise, I have a soft spot for A Place To Bury Strangers, but especially when paired with indie rock that is aiming at something retro it just grates on my ears. There's nothing particularly wrong with the second half of this album but after the instrumental things just fail to click as they did with most of the first half.
For all my frustrations with some of these songs in comparison to their brethren there are some truly excellent songs on this album. Which only serves to highlight the noisey, slow burning parts that burden this LP.