Cloud Nothings: Attack on Memory (a review)

Youth is so great. At some point in the near future, I’m sure, Cloud Nothings (or whatever moniker Dylan Baldi is recording under) will record something boring, or a ill-fated concept album, or just run out of ideas (ala Conor Oberst), but at the moment, he’s breathlessly racing through his ideas like there isn’t enough tape to capture them. And that’s why we get a third full-length in as many years, this one spilling over with new ways to distill his love for hooks.

The narrative for Attack on Memory is that it’s more abrasive, louder, less in thrall to traditional pop tropes, and I guess that’s true, but so far, Baldi (much like Spencer Krug, albiet with a completely different musical vocabulary) seems unable to make music that isn’t endlessly, riotously catchy. This is not a bad thing. And something that can be said for Attack on Memory vs. his self-titled sort-of debut is that the extended song lengths and more outré ambitions give his songwriting and gift for melody more time and space to develop. “Heartbeat” is amazing, as I’ve mentioned before, but it’s also barely a minute long – Attack on Memory is only 8 songs long, and while only one of the songs is actually “long,” the whole effect is bracing and not quite as breathless, this time around.

Anyway, although the whole thing is basically one long highlight, I particularly like “Separation” – a 3-minute instrumental that kind of reads like a mission statement for the record – “bash the shit out of everything in sight, but keep it catchy and tight.” It’s pretty amazing.

Cloud Nothings: “Separation”