Are you bored of Cave In spin-off projects yet? I’m not, and Adam McGrath certainly isn’t; Clouds is his latest band, and he’s having enough fun that some of it’s bound to rub off if you give We Are Above You a listen.
Fun it may be, but the music of Clouds doesn’t have anywhere near the wide-eyed weirdness of, say, Pet Genius. We Are Above You is pretty straightforward stuff as far as instrumentation is concerned, and the songwriting is pretty simple and direct too, albeit taking in a diverse span of styles to throw into the soup-pot. The resulting flavour is definitely rawk, based around riffs thumped out on low-slung sludge guitars, but there are also strong punkish overtones, lending a speedy, slightly ragged and devil-take-the-hindmost vibe to the tunes.
But why stop there, eh? Clouds are evidently fans of strong flavours, as they’ve peppered We Are Above You with equal parts stoner riffola and flanger-drenched seventies psyche-outs, with cast-off blues-scale solos and recycled Sabbath drum fills welded into something that looks a little rusty at first glimpse… but once you’re up close, it turns out to be rock solid and running on a full head of steam.
And up close is exactly what you get. We Are Above You has up-front and personal production, with no ProTools gloss and polish; some of the songs even sound as if they were recorded live rather than multitracked and overdubbed, with McGrath and his gang cheerfully shrieking, yelling and bawling their way through the tunes. Clouds are a real rock band, operating without the safety net - and damn, it’s refreshing to hear.
But Clouds‘ hardcore roots show through from time to time (most notably in the Noo Yoick clatter of “Horrification”) as well as hints of rock’n'roll flair in “Heisenberg Says”. And then there’s “Glass House Rocks”, its retro trip-out stomp sounding like a hardcore band doing a Screaming Trees pastiche, and “Garbage In, Garbage Out”, wherein Kyuss and Clutch seemingly collaborate to score a scene from a Woody Allen spaghetti western/zombie mash-up flick… you’re spoiled for choice, you really are.
And it really is just good clean fun - though it can be hard to tell when Clouds are being serious and when they’re yanking your chain. Even so, they’re not averse to overstatement, as We Are Above You draws toward a false ending with the lamenting Frankensteinian refrain “where did we go wrong?”. I shouldn’t worry about it, guys; I’m pretty sure you never did.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: blues, Clouds, hardcore, metal, psychedelic, retro, rock, rock'n'roll, stoner, We Are Above You
