Throwbacks to styles of music from previous decades and generations have been toyed with a lot in the past decade within this thing we’re going to call “indie” music. Whereas it can be fun to relive (or live for the first time) something from another time period, emulating a retro style just for the sake of fun or nostalgia usually has its way of captivating me.
There are only a few cases where it has been brilliantly employed to thematically enhance an album, such as last year’s Kaputt from Destroyer. There, a defeated artist used ‘80s style jazz and synth to create something almost like a porno soundtrack to highlight what a lot of hard working musicians are eventually reduced to. In doing so, it makes a personal statement into a more widespread cultural one, especially because so many bands are hopping on the ‘80s synth fun train these days.
I first heard about Cloud Nothings because they were playing a lot of shows around Boston with local bands that I liked. Back around 2009, they were touring with songs from their first release, Turning On. What was appealing about the band wasn’t just that they played catchy nerd-pop songs about being losers that were just stupid and fun, but the fact that it captured what it felt like for me to live in Boston and go to house shows. The band was the exact kind of band that would’ve thought that they would have time to drive off before their set to get tacos, but end up arriving really late to a living room full of people who didn’t even notice that they were gone, because they were having fun chilling and talking and drinking. Or the type of band that plays too loud in the basement and after their set, everyone has to whisper as the cops drive by with their lights on. I liked the music not because of the associations I had, but because it captured what it was like to be someone my age in the current age.This year’s
Attack on Memory by
Cloud Nothings is another album that borrows some styles and has generated a massive amount of buzz and already landed at number one on some preemptive mid-year lists. However, in contrast to the Cloud Nothings’ previous releases, the album is drastically different and almost sucks out everything that I loved about the band to start with.
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