With releases from the Mars Volta and Queens of the Stone Age already on the shelves, as well as a slew of other excellent releases, this is looking to be a good year for recorded music. And with new stuff on the way from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nine Inch Nails, it is looking to just get better and better.
Of course the best way to tell if it’s a good year is to examine whether even the second-rate releases are worth picking up. So let me enter into evidence the self-titled debut release from The Cloud Room, a sweet collection of baroque pop rock that will get into your head and take your brain hostage until you find something equally catchy to force it out.
Opening with the impossibly enjoyable “Hey Now Now,” the album finds a distinct tone and sticks to it through its 11 songs. The rhythms are infectious and the instrumentation swings between sparse and nearly overdone.
This is a strong pop album with a contemporary sound. It is quite possible that people will stumble across this in a decade or so and be reminded of what the early years of the new millennium sounded like.
This is not to say the album is perfect. The lyrical content rarely matches the melodies that adorn them, often coming off as absurd and stilted. The lack of variation also leaves much of the album feeling indistinct, with a few standouts among some pleasant filler. But this is a debut release, and a good one at that, so all of the faults just point to the potential of the band. It will be nice to see what they do next.
-Ryan Nyburg