Cloud Nothings Turning On (Wichita)
3/5
By: Theo Krekis
When you first turn on Turning On, don’t question your iPod, don’t hit your laptop out of frustration, nor scream obscenities at your stereo. The settings are fine. They are in order. They are not broken.
What Cloud Nothings have done is bring us an incredibly raw album, one filled with heavily distorted guitars and close to inaudible vocals that might well make you question whether a wire has come loose in your speakers. But when you ask that question of the record (weirdo), it will reply with a sharp ‘NO’.
For me, Cloud Nothings succeed in cacophonously updating a genre which once hummed through the sunny streets of a Southern Californian boulevard in 1965 – it’s surf pop, but not as we know it. With tracks like ‘Old Street’ and ‘Hey Cool Kid’, fast paced numbers sounding as though they’ve been both written recorded in their parents’ garage, there’s an implicit rawness and authenticity to its sound that makes the opening half of Turning On quite irresistible.
I have just one hang up, and that is that I can never wholeheartedly recommend a band’s record when I’ve lost interest at the halfway point. The first half dozen of numbers to Turning On amazed me – I tapped my feet, I sang along to songs I didn’t even know the lyrics for, I questioned whether my list of favourite new bands needed a serious re-think. Then track seven hit.
Whether it’s the fault of the record or my own attention span is up for debate, but I lost interest. I soon started to concentrate instead on how many stains I could find on my tracksuit bottoms, and what the best anagram I could make from the band’s name might be. Answers? Six, and ‘Cling Hoods Nut’.
So, apart from discovering that all those years staring at Carol Vorderman on Countdown must have actually taught me something after all, I was left feeling somewhat disappointed by a band who I hadn’t even known for a full record. Though it must be reiterated that these are early days, and there truly is at least a cracking EP’s worth of material in Cloud Nothings’ arsenal. We look forward to hearing it getting added to.
Artists in this article: Cloud Nothings
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