On their newly-released fifth studio album, ‘Life Without Sound’, Cleveland indie rock maestros Cloud Nothings have re-framed the virulent, scuzzed-out unease that has always underpinned their sound with a real sense of optimism and candour.
But rather than fully shedding the skin that they’ve wore so well for the last seven years, Dylan Baldi and co. cut a distinctly more settled figure as a band who have surfaced from an age of almost vital self-doubt with a much slicker brand of slacker rock.
Ahead of their forthcoming European tour in March, Clash talks to Dylan to about the questionable concept of necessary angst, the art of musical obsession, debateable fan expectations, reaching a point of total self-acceptance and more.
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‘Life Without Sound’ is easily your most confident and hopeful release to date. Has a corner has been turned? What’s changed?
Yeah, I think I do feel more confident as a musician or just as a person who makes records for a job. It’s always been kind of uncomfortable and weird, you know? Even just going into a studio is just sort of like, “Well I don’t really belong here. I know so many other people who are so much better than me who should be here…” But if you keep doing something enough eventually you can convince yourself it’s the right thing to be doing.
Your Twitter bio still says, “As bad as the worst band you’ve ever heard.” That needs changed at this point, surely?
I just changed it to that the other day, actually. I thought it was funny. Maybe I’ll change it to something else! I think beforehand it said “New age rock band” or something and that confused people so I figured I’d just say we were bad…
Maybe an improvement, actually. When you posted the album’s lead single Internal World on Facebook last year someone commented, “Has Dylan lost his angst?” Do you think it’s “necessary” to have angst to write your particular kind of music?
I don’t think so. When we released ‘Here And Nowhere Else’, the first comment on the YouTube video for ‘I’m Not Part of Me’ – which was the first single from that record – was some person just going insane, saying “This is terrible!” They said basically the same thing but in a lot more words. They were really upset with us for making that song, saying that I wasn’t “angsty” anymore or something. I was like, “Geez, who cares? Like why do you care so much about this?”
I don’t think there’s any lack of angst or something in the new record, necessarily. I think it’s a pretty energetic, occasionally intense sounding album. It’s definitely happier – well, maybe not happier, but it features more pleasing chords or something. It’s coming from the same place but maybe just a different side of it, rather than it being a case of me trying to eradicate anything we’ve ever done or something. We’re moving forward with it rather than re-hashing.
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I think I do feel more confident as a musician or just as a person who makes records for a job...
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The transition is akin to Weezer moving from ‘Pinkerton’ to the ‘Green Album’ in that although it’s obviously more polished than previous records, familiar themes and personal confrontations are there. Do you feel that working with John Goodmanson as producer here fed into the clear progression?
Yeah, if any songs that we’ve written were poised to be produced in this way I guess it’s these set of songs, just because I think every song is a little different on the record; they’re all on their own journey. They’re very self-contained songs so it kind of served them well to be produced this way. But I didn’t go in there thinking that it was going to be a big produced record. That’s just sort of what Goodmanson did. We were like, “Alright! Whatever you want, John!” So it just turned out that way.
The way all of our records sound are never fully our decision. We always work with someone who always has a very defined sense of style, so no matter what we say throughout the process it comes out sounding kind of however the producer wants us to sound.
Especially towards the end of the record, the “polish” and residual “angst” marry together nicely, I think. One aspect that works particularly well throughout is the vocals – you’ve mentioned before that you’ve felt progressively more confident singing, is this the first album where you felt fully able to sing as you’d like?
Well, I'm always just trying to sing in a way that I can handle hearing when it gets played back because I don't like singing. But seeing as I write the songs I’m the one who has to sing them. Anyway, with this record, in particular, I didn’t even really know how I was going to sing until I was in the studio, listening on headphones and doing my vocal takes. I thought, “Well, these sound like big songs. Whatever Goodmanson did this sounds pretty huge…” If I had just sung half-assed it just wouldn’t have made sense, so I had to kind of force myself a bit.
On this record, the singing is inhabiting a more confident character than who I am in day-to-day life. So I guess I was kind of playing the “part” that each song called for. Although I always mean what I’m singing it’s hard to decide what to do when you’re singing. Like, we’re pretty regular folks. We just like playing music together and that I think comes across on every record.
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These last seven years have been a constant process of growing into myself...
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As it was a more professional studio environment this time around, do you think that aided the creative process in any way or was the material finalised before you entered the studio?
Well, this was definitely the most exotic place we’ve recorded. But the songs are always done, you know? We do them in Cleveland and practice them forever in a tiny room and go take them somewhere insane. So the actual environment that we’re recording in doesn’t ever really affect the record because the songs are definitely just done; I know what they’re supposed to sound like and we just try to make them sound as good as we can.
Your third album, 2014s ‘Here and Nowhere Else’ was born from spontaneity and finding rare windows of opportunity to write and record, whereas this record stems from having a lot more time and lewway. Do you think having the freedom to work on composition worked in the album’s favour overall?
I spent like a year working on these songs, just laying them out and messing with them constantly, every day, just obsessing over these things, and then another six months with the band, working on them, doing more and changing and changing them. Then in the last month before we went in the studio to record we were just practicing every day, for like ten to twelve hours every day. Like, a stupid long time. But by the time we went to the studio we really knew the songs – they were done.
I think we were in the studio too long, actually. Three weeks is too long – nobody needs to go there for that long! On ‘Attack On Memory’ we practiced a tonne, and we were totally ready for that. On this record I felt the same way about it all – we were just ready to go in there and nail it. I like that feeling. I like being prepared.
It certainly comes across that way. It’s a very concentrated album, and it feels like it comes from a place of self-awareness in many ways. In the press release you said you’re focusing on more exterior ideas…
I guess so, yeah. Even this record is pretty much about me it’s also about having that realisation. It’s not necessarily “about” the outside world, it’s more a case of having the thought of, like, “Oh, I should be thinking about more than just me…” I still write about what I’m thinking or what I’m going through at any given moment but I want to frame it in different ways, I guess.
Writing about my life and “doing” Cloud Nothings has definitely changed me in all sorts of ways. It’s given me way more of a sense of direction and purpose than I ever had at any point when I was younger. As a kid I didn’t really know what I wanted to do; I didn’t really care about anything. Then I discovered I could make this music and it could actually affect other people and that could be the “point”. I could be doing this thing that could actually help other people, rather going through these motions and just being sad, you know? These last seven years have been a constant process of growing into myself through writing these songs.
And just recently I’ve started to feel like I’m really choosing this and it was the right thing to be doing. Finally, it’s come around to being a good thing.
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'Life Without Sound' is out now.
Words: Brian Coney