Cloud Nothings – Attack On Memory (2012)

Back in 2012 I started my blog about annual top 10 albums. For many of these lists, I used the website besteveralbums.com to figure out which albums came out in which year. That website also helped me to find more good albums, as I listened through a fair share of the most highly rated albums. That's how I found this second album by the American band Cloud Nothings. Right from the start, I felt like this was the kind of sound I hadn't heard in new bands in years. This was the sound of the 90's when hard guitar sounds of grunge gave birth to another more melancholic and melodic genre, emo, in other words emotional hardcore. This band sounded a lot like Sunny Day Real Estate, which I had really gotten into many years earlier. There was also some influences from grunge. This kind of sound had almost disappeared by 2010, but Cloud Nothings brought it back and I was quite glad about that.

The opening song No Future/No Past is a great opening song. The raspy vocals and slow tempo sharp electric guitars with pounding drums make an awesome heavy sound that I immediately was drawn into. This song is followed by probably the most impressive song on the album, Wasted Days, that uses some similar sounds to those of Sonic Youth, but the tempo is a lot faster and there are traces of 90's punk in there. There's some amazing guitar-playing in this song. Fall In sounds more like 90's skate punk, which takes the album's sound into completely different direction. The vocals are very lo-fi still. Stay Useless sounds more like typical guitar-driven indie rock, but where many other bands a couple of years earlier had disco drums on the background, this song drives on punk drums. Separation is a super-fast paced punk song with some excellent distortion and noise rock guitars in the style of 80's alternative rockers. No Sentiment brings back the melancholic and heavy sound that started the album. This is one of the best songs on the album in my opinion. The last two songs Our Plans and Cut You are more in the basic lo-fi indie rock genre.

Stay Useless has an amazing animated music video of school kids and one boy's action figurine. This video looks like it might be straight from one of the 90's MTV programmes. I'm sure if this song had existed, they would've played in Beavis & Butthead.

I tried listening to the later albums by Could Nothings and there's nothing exactly wrong with them, but I feel like they have lost the edge because they have too polished production. The first album on the other hand doesn't yet have that amazing deep darkness as Attack On Memory and that's why I think Attack On Memory is one of a kind, best album by this band.

Now that 90's is coming back in fashion, I'm waiting for big sounding guitars to come back as well. It would be great to have another wave of grunge and emo. If that happens, Cloud Nothings has been somewhat of a pioneer in that field.

Listen to the album on Spotify.