http://3dotmag.com/cloud-nothings-and-ryley-walker/
April 17, 2013 @ Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro NC
Review by Michael Wood | Photo by Pooneh Ghana
I’ve been addicted to a game called Song Pop. It’s taken many hours out of my life, sitting on my cell phone, playing this mindless, yet fun for any music geek game. Basically, they just play a few seconds of a song and you guess the song or artist as quick as you can, and you go up against people. One of the categories is “2013 Grammy Nominees”. I’m playing it, and it’s all the typical garbage: Bruno Mars, Robin Thicke, Taylor Swift, etc. but then I hear “Stay Useless” by Cloud Nothings. What? When and how did they make it to the Grammy’s? So, this band, that I thought was a smaller, unknown band, is on this playlist. Shows how much my finger is off the pulse. Point is, this small band, since its birth in 2009, has made a splash in territory you wouldn’t think would be available to them. Their sound is unpretentious, loud and emotive, and would have sounded perfect on that mix tape I used to make girls in the 90s with Superchunk, Dinosaur Jr., and Archers of Loaf.
On April 17, Cloud Nothings made it to Cat’s Cradle. Although they seemed to have made a splash in the media world, there was still some confusion as to rather they were actually big enough to be headlining the main stage at the cradle. There is a smaller room, and as I was looking around the room in the beginning of the night, I was wondering if maybe they should have taken that room.
At nine, the opener, Ryley Walker started. Though this was a full band, it was obvious that this project was really just the one guy, Walker. His voice was whiskey warm, and the songs were atmospheric yet based on raw blues tradition. My first thought was that this guy loves Jeff Buckley. The decision to pair Walker with Cloud Nothings was odd. Very odd. So, I had a beer or two, and waited out this set of long winded stoner folk anthems to get to Cloud Nothings.
By the time Walker finished, the room was filling up, and my pondering question as to if this show should have even been in the main room was answered (the answer was yes, and to never doubt the fine promoters at Cat’s Cradle again). Cloud Nothings casually hit the stage in no rock star fashion. Tonight they a three-piece. While they have often been a four-piece band, there seemed to be no missing piece. Actually, they were so loud that I would have thought a fourth member would have been too much, using the Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr. school of thought on bass (being as loud and distorted as the guitar). They blistered through a no frills, straight forward set of rock songs, with very little banter. They played a bit from their entire catalog, throwing in a few tunes from their new record, Here and Nowhere Else. But the highlight of their set were the songs off of Attack on Memory, being the catchiest, and most anthem-like of their material.
For their encore, they brought out the three members of Walker’s band, and played a very long-winded but energetic song that seemed to get into psych rock territory. Walker did not play guitar, rather, seemed to have some sort of harmonica. But there was so much noise, that whatever he was doing was inaudible. After about a ten minute sweat fueled jam, they left the stage, and the audience talked to each other way too loud, because we were all partially deaf. Good times!
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