Album Review – Cloud Nothings – Here and Nowhere Else

Cloud Nothings are an excellent lo-fi rock band out of Cleveland. A guitar, bass and drums along with Dylan Baldi’s lead vocals. In fact, Cloud Nothings basically started as a one man band of just Baldi, but the band now has permanent bass and drum members too. However, Baldi is clearly still the leader when it comes to the band’s musical direction.

Here and Nowhere Else is a noisy lo-fi racket of an album full of textured rhythmic guitars, grimy, hoarse vocals, and interesting melodic interludes that give some respite from the more punk influenced rock outs. The track “Psychic Trauma” stands out as a great exemplar of all three of these things. The song starts out with a simple, yet catchy guitar riff parading along at a mid-tempo romp before the drums kick the song into hyperdrive with some absolutely ridiculous fills and rolls. Baldi follows the drummer’s lead with some screamy lyrics to match. Excellent track.

The album continues along with some great riff rockers, along with some not so great moments where the lyrics become overpowering and to some extent, detract from the stellar backing tracks. The song “Giving Into Seeing” is a good example of this. The song is like an earlier Cage the Elephant song on cocaine (speaking of which, did you see CTE’s Matt Shultz at Coachella?—yikes!), with a super fast bass riff and solid guitar sub-riffage. However the chorus yelling “SWALLOW,” in this disturbingly nasally, yet throaty voice is off-putting, which is too bad given the quality of the song otherwise. ***edit: this songs freaking rocks

However, the album ends on an absolute dime with “I’m Not Part of Me.” This is as good as it gets in terms of rock and roll. Just take a listen. It’s catchy, just edgy enough, YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THE LYRICS (A+++), and a nice length. Kinda reminds me of lo-fi rockers Ladyhawk, with the more obvious Built to Spill influence. It’s a perfectly crafted little gem ending off a solid album from Cloud Nothings.

8.5/10