Cloud Nothings began as the brainchild of 18-year-old Ohioan, Dylan Baldi. His home recordings, chronicled on the compilation ‘Turning On’, impressed the people at Wichita Records and he was signed in 2009. The advantage of being an 18-year-old recording songs on a laptop is that you can get away with material that sounds a bit scrappy and rough, however without the lo-fi guise to fall back on the four-piece version of Cloud Nothings has something to prove on its full-length debut.
Albeit a contemporary cliché to say that an indie band is influenced by The Beach Boys, it is so blatant from the vocal harmony on opener Understand At All (almost identical to You Believe In Me) that this assertion needs to be made. Surf pop isn’t their defining characteristic, however. The first track sets the scene for most of the album: snappy, melodic indie-pop with a hint of punk. It is a seam that has been mined by many other bands of late, including The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Tokyo Police Club. Unfortunately for Cloud Nothings, both of the aforementioned bands deliver it in a more interesting and effective way.
The production on ‘Cloud Nothings’ is far superior to that of Baldi’s home recordings, and the album as a whole is more coherent than ‘Turning On’, but nothing here matches the insouciant charm of Hey Cool Kids. The strength of the earlier collection of singles was diversity, whereas ‘Cloud Nothings’ is samey to the point where it is sometimes hard to decipher where one song ends and another begins. The band is tight and it’s clear they are good musicians, but there is little in the way of light and shade. Guitar, bass, drums and vocals all go hell-for-leather on every track which, despite creating restless energy, leaves no space.
Having said all that, there is much to like about ‘Cloud Nothings’. It boasts some infectious guitar hooks, memorable melodies, and considerably pop savvy songwriting. Forget You All The Time stands out simply because it slows down the rhythm of the album and shows that they know how to put a song together. The contrast between mature and throwaway, however, is apparent when you compare Forget You All The Time to Heartbeat: the kind of pop-punk that, ten years back, might have been the soundtrack to Stifler’s Mom seducing Shitbreak.
It is important to consider that youth is on Cloud Nothings’ side, and they have shown signs that they are capable of producing something substantial. This time though, despite some catchy tunes, there is disappointingly little in the way of depth.