The addition of soul crushing songwriter Bon Iver makes next Friday a must see for NDFY.
Minneapolis art-rock maximists (if you can have minimalists, you can totally have maximists) Cloud Cult appear courtesy of both tragedy and the unending hopefulness of finding one’s center. Mastermind Craig Minowa lost his infant son in 2002 and has used his band as an outlet for his tireless quest to figure out how the hell you keep going after such a loss, but this is no mopey songwriter fair. Minowa’s eccentricities keep Cloud Cult’s often vast and cinematic music weightlessly buoyant while the palpable personal connection he has with the songs ensures that even the most atmospheric orchestration feels incredibly close to the vest.
MP3: Cloud Cult - Take Your Medicine
Pennsylvania’s Illinois is one prominent indie band. They’re usually everywhere at once - on tour, at SXSW, playing Lollapalooza…yet they haven’t been able to break into the closely guarded inner sanctum of Can’t Do Wrong, where Sufjan Stevens sips mineral water with Win Butler and Jens Lekman. This is a solid, storytelling-heavy indie-folk band with tight songs and a banjo player for a frontman, but something is holding them back. Nevertheless, “Screendoor” is as catchy an “oh oh” chorus as you’ll find on Internet radio.
Ah, here’s the one we’ve been waiting for. As you may know, I’m head over heels in love with the A&R direction of Secretly Canadian and its partner labels. Whenever a SC/Jagjag/Dead Oceans release lands on my doorstep, it immediately moves to the front of my listening line. I’m still waiting to be proven wrong, because Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar) certainly didn’t do it. His driver’s license reads “Justin Vernon,” but he’s become less a songwriting man and more the embodiment of his adopted moniker (a take on the French term “good winter”). It’s only appropriate that the season takes some credit for this sparse yet miraculously ambient music, as the tastes and sounds of the four months Vernon spent recording For Emma in a snowed-in cabin in central Wisconsin are very nearly audible on the record. It’s ancient, it’s comforting, and it’s hopefully heartbreaking.
Louisville’s Wax Fang have enjoyed comparisons to David Bowie’s sharp vocals and dreamy glam shimmer, but this is a band seeking to hit something - hard. Self-described as “how rock ‘n’ roll might sound if it simultaneously existed in the past and future,” there’s no doubt that Scott Carney and company are channeling the might and fury of first-wave ‘hard’ rockers through a filter of disjointed modern nerd rock…like they’re concurrently pilfering from both Journey and the Silver Jews.
1 response so far ↓
b // Jan 10, 2008 at 2:40 pm
cloud cult cancelled.
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