No One Knows No Nothing (Cloud Cult, Knitting Factory)

I’ve written about Minnesota’s Cloud Cult, before.  About the richness of their sound – a confluence of Midwestern tributaries, Native American stomps and shakers share time with Beckish beats and bleeps, spaced-out Spree and hippy Lipsish streams bubble along with the emotional immediacy and honesty of the Saddle Creek bands.  Some Brockish vocals flow in, from out Washington way.  About their lyrics, where sage advice shares time with childlike wonder, mystery with simplicity, stories with samples.  Questions are answers.  They’re available without being boorish.  Painfully personal and perfectly universal.  They get me gushing.

And I’m going to write about Cloud Cult again.  And again and again and again.  Because, as far as I’m concerned, last year’s Advice from the Happy Hippopotamus (buy! buybuybuy!) is special in a way no other recent release has been.  It almost seems that right now, more than any other time, music is disposable:  There are 3,000 music blogs out there hyping at least one band every day, and with so many fish it’s easy to fall in-and-out of love without care.  Glutton your way through the ocean and you’re bloated, your palate dulled.

I’m here, jumping up and down, saying:  Stop consuming music.  Listen to this.

I’ve been listening to this record almost constantly for a year now and am still finding new things in it.  There’s just so much there, and the texture varies so much that if you’ve only sampled a couple tracks, you ain’t heard nothing, yet.  It belongs on every CD rack that holds Funeral, on every computer with You Forgot it in People in its memory.  This band deserves all the success in the world, and you owe it to yourself to buy it.

I was almost disappointed when Cult leader Craig Minowa said, in e-mail updates, they’d be trying out new material on this tour.  Because Hippo hasn’t been appreciated enough, yet.  New stuff might just be a distraction.

Needn’t have worried:  He opened their set at the Knitting Factory with “Chemicals Collide,” a simple solo number that’s all of two-and-a-half-weeks-old; it very nicely brought together man and nature and love and science and birth and death... and everyone in the room.

Things came apart, a bit, when the band started into its Hippo tracks.  Advice is such a perfectly crafted record – and I’m so familiar with it, now – it takes a little while to reconcile the recordings with the sloppy sound the band has, live.  I went through the same adjustment the first time I saw them, and I imagine I’ll do it again the next time (which will be tonight, upstairs at Pianos).  But the songs aren’t precious little things, and they survive.

The sound was actually rougher, this time.  The band is now a four-piece, having parted ways with violinist Theresa Hanley; it’s an unfortunate loss as there’s just that much less to balance out the weight in the lower register.  The bass and drums threaten to rumble all over arrangements; at one point, during “Living on the Outside of the Skin,” drummer Dan Greenwood actually seemed to take over one of the guitar lines on his toms.  Greenwood also sings more than I’d remembered, harmonizing with Minowa and cellist Sarah Young.  Which is great, but while Minowa and Young sing high (Minowa ably singing, on "Car Crash,” what had on CD been a female lead), Greenwood sings low.  And there’s so much going on down there, already, it sort of drags things down.  Even when Minowa wailed away at his guitar – a bashed-up electric, this time, not the acoustic he modified last time – full-on distortion barely registered as a ripple.

I’m nitpicking, of course.  But the quieter songs had a clarity missing from the louder stuff, mostly because the bass elements backed off.

Three new pieces, including the opener.  A longish song that culminated with Minowa repeatedly crying “Kaidin” – the name of his son, who passed away unexpectedly one night four years ago and whose presence basically fuels the entire band’s catalogue – began feeling undercooked.  Another was an irresistible fable about a man who spends his entire life digging into the earth, looking for his true love; if you put your ear to the ground, you can hear him now, saying “I love you more than you know.”

There were also “Breakfast with my Shadow” and “Chandeliers” from light-motifed Aurora Borealis (buy), the latter, again, irresistible... (“I’m  always/Dumbin’ up the smart things/And smartin’ up the dumb things/And knottin’ up my shoe strings/And messin’ up the good things/But did you see the stars last night?”)...and several selections from Hippo.  They managed to get through “Transistor Radio” with only one re-start, this time (ryspace has a live MP3!), and the “Hey Hey My My” quote from the end of “Happy Hippo” still makes for a rousing closer.  But they have so many songs – 22 on that last CD alone – there was no way to fit everything everyone wanted to hear in an hour-long set.

There are so many favorites to be had.

At the end, as they were being rushed off and the people in the audience – the bulk of whom were clearly there to see Cloud Cult, many of whom knew the music – started to filter out, the lead singer for the closing band ran up and grabbed the mic.  “Don’t go anywhere,” she begged.  “We’re going to rock you!”

“Will you play ‘Clip-Clop’?” someone yelled back.

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Cloud Cult is playing a FREE acoustic show tonight upstairs at Pianos; part of the Cross-Pollination series, they’ll be trading sets and then collaborating with the M. Shanghai String Band.  7:30pm.

After a quick trip to Boston, they’re back in the city on Friday for another early show (8pm) at Arlene’s Grocery with The Undisputed Heavyweights.

I listed the rest of their dates here.

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Thanks to Jen and Gothamist for getting them into a decent-sized space, and getting them some extra attention.

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You Got Your Blogs to Make a Beat:

So far, there’s

Brooklyn Vegan, Gothamist, Ryspace (with mp3s!), Village Indian (who will hopefully have something up at Stereogum), Waved Rumor

Lost in Your Inbox was at their Philly show, a couple nights ago.

tags: gothamist  concert reviews  cloud cult  

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