Cloud Nothings do not qualify as Douglas Martin Music.
1. If you could go from lo-fi guitar pop to mall-punk to Serious Punk Musician That Everybody Should Take Seriously in about two-and-a-half years, wouldn’t you prefer to have a wider template than Wipers and emocore?
2. Are we witnessing the Great Emo Revival of 2012? If so, will you wake me up when September ends?
3. Vivian Girls followed through on their longstanding Wipers influence and got panned nearly across the board for it, while a band full of dudes pretty much rip them off wholesale (and add a bunch of contrived, nearly unintelligible screaming) and become exalted for it. Does anybody want some cupcakes?
4. Would Cloud Nothings be considered ‘Bini Babies, or did they just record with Steve Albini for the cultural currency and Nirvana stories?
5. Upon listening to “No Future/No Past,” don’t you long for Kurt Cobain’s genuinely tortured howl instead of Dylan Baldi’s attempts at screaming, which basically sounds like 1-ply bathroom tissue being run through a paper shredder?
6. Am I alone in thinking Pedro the Lion was the best band on Jade Tree by like a mile?
7. How can you call an album Attack on Memory when it so brazenly references a genre so dependent on nostalgia for a time that didn’t happen all that long ago?
8. Seriously, is the title supposed to be ironic?
9. Are we ever going to get to a point where middle-class white dudes complaining about their problems actually gets old?
10. Am I really going to let that last question slide without acknowledging that the bulk of music journalism consists of middle-class white dudes complaining about their problems?
11. How many dozens of mics does Steve Albini use when he’s recording drums?
12. Don’t Cloud Nothings seem like the kind of band Shellac would have beaten up in the 90’s?
13. Can’t you just picture these guys recording while all wearing those Jawbreaker t-shirts with the Morton Salt girl?
14. Is it all that inconceivable that Albini played Online Scrabble the entire time the band was recording this album?
15. Can’t we all agree that a getting a Triple Word Score is every bit as exciting as this album?
16. Can’t we all agree that getting a Triple Word Score using the word “quartz” is more exciting than this album?
17. Does that make this album the equivalent of someone shouting, “You can’t use non-English words!” in a visceral whine?
18. If you’re being charitable, would you say this album is in the Top Fifty albums Steve Albini has worked on?
19. Why don’t more bands shamelessly rip off The Breeders?
20. This is really the album that’s supposed to make people care about guitar music in 2012?
Download:
MP3: Cloud Nothings-“Stay Useless”
