Cloud Nothings Are Here And Nowhere

Fighting off any urge to mature, Dylan Baldi and Cloud Nothings have tightened up their performance while muddying up their sound. Whereas Attack On Memory took the band out of Baldi's self-titled bedroom set, none of Here And Nowhere Else is done with ease.

Bassist TJ Duke and drummer Jayson Gerycz have managed to coax out something not at all unexpected but somehow a welcomed step forward for the band. They skip out on its minimalistic rawness to fill every inch of breathing space with an eruptive squall.

Sometimes this leaves Baldi very little room to punctuate his vocals above the brawniness of it. But when he does, his vocals stack up on the wall of noise with an unflinching certainty. So while this isn't the same pop-punk production that began in his basement, everything about it keeps their Cleveland-based brashness intact.

Here And Nowhere Else keeps Cloud Nothings edgy. 

The powered up anarchy of Cloud Nothings wastes no time in setting a direction. Now Hear In opens with a throaty guitar before Baldi cuts to the point. "I can feel your pain, and I feel all right about it."

The no-nonsense track doesn't say much because there's nothing left to say. It's painfully obvious he wants to walk away, something the band makes especially clear as they pick up the pace of the instrumental toward the end of the song — walking away turns into a brilliant sprint.

The other must-listen track on the album comes in at the end. And it's made even more accessible by its video. Despite the punk undercarriage, I'm Not Part of Me masquerades as a bubble gum slumber party sing-along, complete with Rock Band instruments, squirt guns, and Ouija boards. It's good clean fun amid an album that remains delightfully scrappy.


Those two songs aren't alone among the must-listen tracks they bookend. Quieter Today talks about what it must be like to be in a band where everyone has a supermassive ego. It's raw and occasionally brutish in making the point — sometimes you have to shut up and listen.

Interestingly enough, the analogy isn't lost on the band. The whole social media era puts everyone on a pedestal to talk away their days — even when no is listening. This track breaks through some of it.

Psychic Trauma is a badly needed growler, with some especially sick drum work by Gerycz. Like many of the tracks on the Here And Nowhere Else, there is a remarkable build as the band continues to push each other faster and faster, raunchier and raunchier.

Psychic Trauma is likely the fastest, but it is Just See Fear that Baldi counts among his favorites. Along with an instrumental build, Baldi erupts into some signature screams. He almost has too much fun doing it, but not as much fun as screaming the word "swallow" on Giving Into Seeing.

According to Baldi, he didn't have a word to scream so he asked his French girlfriend what her favorite English word might be. He was happy enough to add it (but we're not sure if she received a writing credit). History was made either way. Just like that.

No Thoughts was one of the first songs written for the album. Pattern Walks clocks in at just under eight minutes. The track is really a band jam that meanders through several ideas because the end to the songs becomes a response to Wasted Days.

Here And Nowhere Else By Cloud Nothings Rips 9.1 On The Liquid Hip Scale.

Some critics were hoping for more for Cloud Nothings, but it's not clear what that might have been. Here And Nowhere Else catches the band in the present, where they are still at the top of their game and still challenging themselves to do more. It's hard to ask for more than that. Here is the right now.

You can pick up Here and Nowhere Else by Cloud Nothing from Amazon. You can also download the album from iTunes. It's clearly their most ambitious album and the one everyone will most want to see live. Fan reviews are consistently high, ranging from 4.5 to 5. We're right there too.

Hunters Spark Up A Narcissist Romp

Raw, grungy and thumping are only the first few words that come to mind when sampling almost anything off the new self-titled album from Hunters. Hailing out of Brooklyn, the boy-girl mix up from singer-guitarists Derek Watson and Isabel Almeida is an act to relish as next generation bubblegum sludge.

The self-titled album blisters along as the fronting duo trades guitar barbs and harmonies that are sometimes inspired by the band's own relationships. What makes it especially memorable is that the band taps into the aptly varied experience of them, unfurling intensely tribal and intimately tender in equal measure.

Hunters' self-titled debut looks backward while moving forward. 

For many people, the Hunters are new and freshly unearthed from the underground. In truth, they've already laid down some nice credentials. Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) mixed their first EP (2011). James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins) helped out on the production end. It was a solid sampling of potential.

The pair spend so much time together that it creates a natural tension, something they seem to be able to creatively turn into well-timed chords and shouts. And that's the point. They push each other's buttons for a creative reaction, which is how they came upon starting the band years ago.

Four years ago, the duo met while working at a video game arcade in Chinatown. In between their work duties, they would talk about art, videos and music until they eventually propelled each other to turn their shared consumption into creation. And that wasn't the last time fate made a difference.

They met Iha at one of their earliest gigs after Watson decided to play on with a bloody face caused by a carelessly thrown champagne bottle. Iha has been in their corner ever since, no doubt helping them fan the flames of hostile songwriting like on Narcissist.


The raucously appealing free-for-all of a video captures the essence of their live shows, a subtle reminder not to take anything breakable into a mosh pit. It's a song the band claims never had any meaning until after they started playing it.

The grungy and taut relentlessness is a common thread across the album. The second track, Street Trash, takes off with a primal progressive percussion thump, before Watson and Almeida trade chants back and forth. There is an indie charisma at work, backed up by the other two but less visible band members, Gregg Giuffré and Thomas Martin.

Street Trash, interestingly enough, was named in honor of the 1987 J. Michael Muro horror movie. It's one of three fixations Watson and Almeida share together: horror movies, music and professional wrestling. The latter is incorporated into their act in other ways. People mix it up on the floor at their shows. They mix it up on stage.

Other standout tracks to check out while listening to the album include the mellow by comparison She's So, the laid back and settled Seizure, and the sludge pop Blackheart blown out by Almeida. Those songs are all sharply addictive, even if this is one of those cases that call for owning the album.

There is an ebb and flow to the album that gives it a pulse of its own. Even the less listenable tracks like Nosebleed, Thin Twin and Undone are solid, passed over only because the balance of the album is so striking in comparison. Without the comparison, every track stands on its own.

Hunters' Self-Titled Stomps 9.4 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale. 

The Hunters have a knack for playing to their strengths and their strengths are based largely on matching up contrasts. They scream over easy instrumentals and add melody to overly crunchy riffs, all of which makes the Brooklyn indie rockers irresistible. Even better, these 20-something punks are just getting started.

You can pick up Hunters self-titled from Amazon. The album is also available for download off iTunes or the CD can be found at Barnes & Noble. The band is currently touring, slogging back and forth between both coasts and playing shows at select venues in between. Facebook has them listed.

Wavves Aren't Too Afraid Of Heights

The new 14-track album from the Wavves might be called Afraid Of Heights, but the surf rock/pop punk band led by Nathan Williams really isn't. This is the album that will take the Wavves higher still.

The fourth studio album, which was released last month, is filled with self-loathing and an ambitious mix of minimalism and expressive experimentation. The bigger sound is attributed in part to producer John Hill, who has worked with M.I.A., Santigold and Rihanna, but there is something more too.

"The realness of life starts to hit you later on." — Nathan Williams to Pitchfork

As Williams has matured so has his writing. In youth, he says, having your parents home makes being moneyless and careless a little more bearable. Not having a home or knowing where your next meal is coming from, on the other hand, is a hard luck life.

Every track on Afraid Of Heights makes it unmistakably clear that Williams is coming down to earth. He is well past the meltdown that almost ended the career he recaptured with King Of The Beach. As much as that album re-established him as a serious artist, Afraid Of Heights reaches higher.

The lineup feels right too. Although Billy Hayes is missing, Jacob Cooper (drums) has played with Williams long enough to stick. So has Stephen Pope, who came aboard to make King Of The Beach.


What's most surprising about the sound, especially on tracks like Sail To The Sun, is that no one really knows where the band might take something after the opening. The same can be said about the spirit of the song too. Nobody wants to be left behind, except when everybody seems to be racing for a grave.

Following Sail To The Sun is Demon To Leave On, which could boast the best lyrics ever laid down by Williams. The track might be a knock against the ambivalence of youth, wasted years that no one can get back after they've been wasted, but it's also a confessional that is authentic from start to finish.

Afraid Of Heights is all about looking at life through a retrospective lens.

Some people size up these songs as all pointing to the same fleeting feeling that everything we have that's fun eventually leads to failure, death and loneliness. Maybe so, but Williams also makes it clear enough that much of these feelings come along with choices. As much as he is wise enough to see the bleakness of eventuality, he also seems to hit a raw nerve in that he wishes he caught on sooner.

These two tracks are followed by Mystic, an overtly distorted atmospheric trip; Lunge Forward, which brings in some classic surf jangles; and Dong, the mellow cello-enhanced love ballad. And then there is Afraid Of Heights, a title track that creates a roughly composed but enjoyable nod to early Weezer, which Williams said he was listening to incessantly.

Ironically, even Paranoid catches Williams reflecting on his reflection. The track rightly reminds everybody that Williams is done maturing as an artist. There is plenty for him to learn and more wisdom to grab and hold onto for however long he's got. Just listen to the must-have track Cop for a little evidence.

The balance of the album continues on with a stack of mid-tempo songs, except the tempo killer Everything Is My Fault. The song itself is fine but its placement is questionable. Still, it doesn't matter. You'll want the album, along with the bonus track Hippies Is Punks.

Afraid Of Heights By Wavves Creates White Caps At 8.1 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

While a few people have suggested the length of the album makes it drag, I don't hear it. Afraid Of Heights is smartly written, relevantly dark, and meticulously produced. It's easily Williams' finest album, catching him perfectly between being a reckless kid and maturing, and an increasingly serious artist. Anybody listening won't be able to help but wonder what's next.

Afraid of Heights by the Wavves is available on Amazon. You can also download the album from iTunes. Check out Barnes & Noble for the vinyl or Facebook for upcoming tour dates. Right now, the band is working its way across the Midwest, playing with plenty of bands we like (including FIDLAR).

Fidlar Just Wants To Have Fearless Fun

Called everything from skateheads to slackers, Los Angeles noise rock-punk band FIDLAR aren't always taken as seriously as musicians as they deserve. Plenty of it has to do with what they write about — drink, drugs, sex, and getting lost in the perpetual party landscape that is the City of Angels.

The rest of it has to do with something else. Their music sounds easy to make, even if they never carelessly toss it together. But that's only the surface. Somewhere in between the bombastic cries for cheap beer and cocaine, FIDLAR knows that the party life has a price. They're willing to pay it.

FIDLAR pushes off polarized opinions for good times.

Everyone has an opinion about everything nowadays. Enough so that many people are pissed off and angry about one thing or another. So it makes it all the more enjoyable to hear singer Zac Carper having his priorities right.

His conviction? He drinks cheap beer. So what if drinking 40 or so makes the morning painful?



Other bands can write about the same thing and it still doesn't work. The beauty of this sing-along is in the passion in which it's played. They play every song across their 14-track DIY album the same way.

Stoked And Broke both glorifies and horrifies the lifestyle. While the band chants up the 60s-style rock bliss of it, the song ends on a sour note. White On White is similarly tinged with somewhat of a social conscience. The music is ferocious old school punk, but the lyrics shuck off any government service.

No Waves carries the album further in that direction, making being used up by drugs into a carefree rock ditty. It's an amazingly infectious party song with an anti-indulgence message that feels good.



The lyrics also ring like the polar opposite of their first EP, titled DIYDUI, which solidified the band's party all the time image. It's only partly true. They did record their first EP in a party house and recording studio shared by bassist Brandon Schwartzel and Carper. And Elvis Kuehn and Max Kuehn are the sons of T.S.O.L. keyboardist Greg Kuehn, which only adds to the mystique.

But like many bands making their own way in California, FIDLAR draws a distinction between living in the moment and wasting your life. Not everyone seems to understand the difference, especially because noise rock and punk bands tend to play the party venues. But it's there on the face of it.

I suppose it's why I like the band. It's incredibly addictive music with dangerously dark lyrics. They aren't afraid to take a chance (fuck it dog, life's a risk). But they aren't stupid either. They know well enough that most bands go bust under the weight of too much booze and drugs. The music rocks.

Even when the band becomes a bit self-indulgent on songs like Max Can't Surf, the honesty overrides any gimmick of just getting drunk. Most of the music is mosh pit ready even if some songs are a bit sugary and slick at times. Beyond those mentioned above, start with Blackout Stout, Wake Bake Skate, and 5 To 9. They are all fine tunes that celebrate the lifestyle but snark the idea of it.

FIDLAR Sinks A Lively Self-Titled Album At 7.2 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

More importantly, listen to the album two or three times. Almost all of the songs are smarter on the second pass, when you realize they aren't just singing about what you think they're singing about.

Most of the songs run somewhere about the two-minute mark, except the seven-minute beauty called Cocaine. The FIDLAR album is available on iTunes and you can also find the release on Amazon. Both stores carry it for about half of what most albums cost. If you haven't seen the FIDLAR tumblr, check it out. You can find the CD on Barnes & Noble.