Cloud Nothings- Cloud Nothings (Carpark- 2011)
~ Gabe McBride
53
What a disappointment. Clevelander Dylan Baldi released his debut as Cloud Nothings, Turning On, in 2010. And it was good. No, it was great. Turning On was lo-fi, immediate and engaging, and mashed together punk presence and effortlessness in a way that belied Baldi’s 18 years. The hooks were big and plentiful, and dammit, it sounded like a long lost classic lineup GbV record. One of PoP's reviewers listed it as his personal album of the year.
So now we get the band’s first official LP, which has ditched the homemade aesthetic for the studio. My first reaction to CN was to think that was the root of the albums failure, but really it’s not. The melodies make appearances throughout the album and there’s no doubting Baldi’s enthusiasm, the problem, is he has ditched the indie ethos for a straight-up thoroughly unremarkable pop-punk sound. It’s not that the songs are bad, per-se, just incredibly pedestrian. There are some good tunes here (‘Should Have’, ‘Forget You all the Time’) but they aren’t enough to carry the load for the rest of the record. The most painful aspect of the record is Baldi’s singing. His strained vocals are pinched and nasal and they're front and center, for the most part, on all 11 tracks. It’s like he painted himself into a corner that no one even knew was in his house. Here’s to album #3.
For Fans of: Sicko
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