Artist: Clouds
Release: 2007
Clouds are a young American band, and they shouldn’t be confused with the Australian group of the same name that was active in the late eighties. Mixing them up is impossible anyway the moment you hear their music. While Clouds from Australia leaned toward lighter, softer-tinged pop tunes, Clouds from America are their complete opposite. They simply know no softness, no lightness; from the first note of the first track on their debut titled Legendary Demo, the guys go all out the whole way through (almost) to the end.
Interestingly, in the thank-you note that comes with the CD, Clouds thank Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, but let’s be honest, you can’t feel their influence on any of the eight songs collected here. Maybe the guys carried that influence over to a totally imperceptible, unrecognizable level, because their music sounds like the exact opposite of everything Zappa and Beefheart ever did. Clouds have more in common with early heavy metal bands and American hardcore groups that vented their anger across Reagan’s America than with the avant-garde madness the two aforementioned artists so masterfully indulged in.
Now, even though the guys undoubtedly have a handle on what they do, over these good forty minutes that their legendary demo runs they stay on a musical shore that, apart from longtime fans of this kind of music, won’t easily win over anyone new. The landscape they tread offers too many other, far more recognizable records that may not be legendary, but are still a few steps ahead of Clouds.
The brightest spot comes, ironically, right at the end, in the nineteen-minute instrumental “Quartulli Dub”, which brings a bit of much-needed freshness, in the form of a saxophone, into an otherwise slightly stuffy sonic room. And although with its epic length the song strays into jazz or some other kind of experimental music-making, it’s precisely this one that breaks furthest out of all the frameworks the band builds up beforehand and then clings to far too faithfully.
Almost twenty minutes of buzzing, squealing and repetitive loops may be too much for many, but most likely not for those who fought their way through the first seven tracks. The whole thing would probably still be a lot more appealing if the ratio were flipped: more, maybe shorter songs à la “Quartulli Dub” and fewer of those that sound quite alike, lost in heavy but totally unnecessary guitar noodling.
Who knows, maybe this is a slightly too weak candidate for a legendary demo, but with a concept either a bit more or a bit less thought out, Clouds could have gone for “legendary debut”?
Lineup
Adam McGrath: Guitar, vocals
Jim Carrol: Guitar, vocals
Jay Cannava: Bass
Q: Drums
Production
Clouds & Stephen Brodsky
Tracklist
01.New Amnesia
02.Pressure
03.Live For It Now
04.PG
05.Mountain Jim
06.Guardian’s Eyes
07.Magic Hater
08.Quartulli Dub
Album length: 41:12
