For better or for worse, Cloud Control tend to get lumbered with the 'dream-pop' tag. In naming their albums Bliss Release and Dream Cave, the four-piece from outside Sydney have ostensibly been pretty slack about escaping that ethereal pigeonhole. Explore second album Dream Cave, though, to detect versatility, with darkwave or synth-based dance moments amid the new wave psychedelic pop. Following 2010's award-winning debut, two months' recording in the Kent countryside has produced enigmatic results; an album progressive yet accessible, slow-burning but occasionally absorbing.
The spelunking exploits of Alister Wright and his Antipodean colleagues finds the band retaining Bliss Release's penchant for melody but unafraid to experiment. Opening with swirling chants à la Animal Collective, Dream Cave flits grandiosely between psychedelic and indie pop, underlined by a new wave twist. Tunes of a poppier disposition emerge most fully formed. Throughout, Wright's and Heidi Lenffer's echoed, expansive choruses are a high point. 'Dojo Rising' kicks the album in to gear and is an obvious single. Exuding the languid glow of warm evening haze, the track resonates as instantly as its rival for stand-out hit, the elegiac 'Scar', where Wright's "It's just so hard / I want to scar" refrain is complemented by heavy guitar and insistent rhythms. Bookended at the deep end of the album by drawn-out bouts of subterranean atmospherics, the cavernous 'Dream Cave' is a sweeping gesture, crafted to be fragile yet dramatic. Astutely described by the band as their take on a cave-dwelling Roy Orbison, it proves a fitting, somnolent close to proceedings, although the ninety second cave acoustics outro is excessive.
Elsewhere, all-in vocal harmonies borrow from the retro-flavoured playbook of psych-pop merchants like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Hints of Arcade Fire and compatriots Tame Impala can be identified throughout, while a trace of Modest Mouse resides in the vocals and quirk-factor of the brooding but satisfying 'Promises'. Other tracks fail to measure up: the bass-driven thrust of 'Island Living' doesn't play to the band's strengths, and 'Tombstone' amounts to a nondescript meander.
Alternately nebulous and enchanting, crashing and dynamic, Cloud Control's sophomore effort may not be ground-breaking but will find its audience. Dream Cave maintains a trajectory, and does no harm to either the integrity of dream-pop or, indeed, the group's international profile.
Review by Killian Barry
