If you’ve talked to me about music recently, you’ve probably heard me rave about Attack on Memory, the most recent LP from Cleveland’s Cloud Nothings. The album represented a massive sonic shift for the group. Gone are the short, lo-fi pop-punk tracks that bandleader Dylan Baldi was recording in his basement. Instead, Attack on Memory embraces both Wipers-style punk and late 90’s, Drive Like Jehu emo, resulting in a screaming, muscular album that is among the best I’ve heard all year. On Sunday, the band played Brighton Music Hall. Needless to say, I was very excited to see if the band could reproduce their sound live.
After opening sets from The Dirty Dishes (who played some solid post-hardcore) and A Classic Education (who played some enjoyable if a bit forgettable indie pop), Cloud Nothings took the stage and immediately ripped into Attack on Memory standout “Stay Useless.” They followed this with “Fall In,” one of the poppier cuts from the album. However, Attack on Memory isn’t just full of pop songs: it’s an album that features Baldi screaming quite a bit, and I wasn’t too sure how his voice would hold up. By the time the band had gotten through the throat-shredding “No Sentiment,” all of my worries had been put to rest. Singing or screaming, Baldi was on point all night.
It’s important to note that this Cloud Nothings is very different from the band that put out “Forget You All the Time” last year. Namely, this band is actually a band, with a full rhythm section supporting Baldi.
And this new band absolutely rocks, a point that was punctuated by their 10-minute rendition of Attack on Memory’s titanic centerpiece “Wasted Days.” The song, which starts as a typical punk jam before segueing into a long instrumental section and finally coming to a—literally—screaming conclusion, was by far the highlight of the night. The middle section managed to get the mostly-hipster crowd doing something akin to moshing. This is something I pretty much never see at a typical indie show, and it’s quite a testament to Cloud Nothings ability that they were able to get the crowd, for lack of a better word, rocking.
“Rock” is really the key word when talking about Cloud Nothings. Recent indie music has taken all kinds of cues—be it from folk, 80’s pop, twee, shoegaze, what have you—but none of it has really rocked. The fact that Cloud Nothings rock, and the fact that they’re a new band, not Superchunk or Dinosaur Jr., is what made Attack on Memory so refreshing. That record blew me away, and I was definitely a little bit afraid that they wouldn’t be able to live up to it live. Luckily, they absolutely did.
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