With lo-fi garage music very much the rage these days, it's no great shock that Cloud Nothings is being billed as Cleveland's answer to California's Wavves. The project of 19-year old Dylan Baldi, who has already released a number of Eps compiled on last year's 'Turning On', in actuality, the particular brand of lo-fi guitar music found on this debut album is closer to that of the late Jay Reatard, or occasionally Idlewild in their earliest punktastic incarnation. In short, this album is jammed full of cracking hooks, the sort that trigger fits of frantic dancing round the bedroom in your PJs.
The energy of Cloud Nothings is non-stop, frenzied and furious, effervescent and utterly infectious, brought to you in bite-size chunks that rarely pass the three minute mark. Though the mood and pace vary little from one song to the next, the unyielding vivacity, foot-tapping rhythms and speedy guitar work are more than enough to hold your interest for this album's short duration. While the likes of 'Rock' and 'You're Not Good At Anything' channel aggressive, noisy 70s punk, 'Nothing's Wrong' thrives on taut, bouncy guitars and 'Forget You All The Time' focuses on perfecting that perfect fuzzy atmosphere for its mellower melody. Though the lyrics are often indecipherable, Baldi's mumbling croak holds a visceral character that's strangely captivating. As he repeatedly rabbits "I don't have a heartbeat, why do you?" on one minute wonder 'Heartbeat', it's enough to get your own heart racing.
Sure, we could dock points for its exceptionally short running time and its blatant one-dimensionality but, when it comes down to it, 'Cloud Nothings' is the most fun you'll have with a guitar record for quite some time.
