The first time I met Dylan Baldi was over two years ago and he was selling me his first CD and I was complimenting on an excellent set as the opener for the opener of Titus Andronicus at Bowery Ballroom. He looked like he was 12 years old, though he was probably more like 19, and his superb lo-fi set, well complemented by a terrific album under the guise of Cloud Nothings, made an immediate fan of me.
Two years later and he has morphed into fucking Mogwai.
Alright, not Mogwai, but, like Mogwai, Cloud Nothings rested quite heavily on instrumentals (It felt like half the time there was no singing). Cloud Nothings jammed and jammed and jammed and they were pretty damn good at it, especially the bass player in the middle who seemed to be getting pretty fucking convoluted over there, And as for Mr. Nothing, Baldi himself, geez, he seemed quote grown up, with a distilled rage that seemed bottle up like rage only coming out under the most controlled of situations. He was like a SEAL, a sort of intense concentration holding holding holding, till, on a song like "No Sentiment", it blows you away.
Thursday nights gig at the Studio At Webster Hall was, I'm guessing, the release party for Cloud Nothings highly rated Attack On Memory. Attack on Memory has 4 good songs and 2 great songs, bracketed by two dogs. Since they only play one of the dogs,. "No Future/No Past", it isn't a distraction. And since Dylan is so far gone, he doesn't mention his new album has been just released and walks off the stage without an encore (about the latter: I'm fine with this up to a point. The point I get pissed is when they don't turn on the house lights to signal the end), and since he doesn't sing that much either, the music is doing the talking.
And the music is speaking well. If you felt Attack On Memory was Steve Albini's album, the sound alone brought an end to this. Twice as loud as the opening band, they move from one brain shaking high point to the next, reaching a zenith with my second favorite song of the year so far, "Wasted Days". Played late in the too short (50 minutes… like that), the song is an epic piece of distraughtedness and doom with a long instrumental in the middle that sounds like the Titanic smacking into an iceberg and instead of coming to rest, dovetails into Baldi's "Getting tired of living till I die" which, you gotta figure, is a touch on the sophomoric side. Still no moshing… I guess the audience were taken by surprise, I've seen folks mosh for less.
Still, written to be sung, the words and the attitude accumulates its power and by the end you gotta think the band had nothing left to add to the proceedings. I dunno if Cloud Nothings will break pop but they sure will be big on the college circuit, where they love their angst with a lot of loud guitar and drums.
Grade: A-