Cloud Nothing's The Shadow I Remember caps a remarkably prolific 12 months for leader Dylan Baldi with a reminder about the possibilities for community that music can provide.
By revisiting their past, Cloud Nothings find something new in it, as well as something timeless, and The Shadow I Remember is a full-throated, full-hearted triumph.
It's a release that sees the band returning to what they do best, but also updating and fine-tuning their craft to reflect how they've matured.
The album feels like that of a seasoned band, but its refined nature doesn’t sacrifice their signature sense of spunk.
The Shadow I Remember is a great return for the band. High-speed rhythms jut up against hooks that fly around and grab you.
The Shadow I Remember feels untethered from expectations: a biting statement of selfhood in the face of change.
'The Shadow I Remember' feels like a nod to where they've been, but more importantly a big, open arms gesture to where they're going.
After eleven years, countless tours and six records, Cloud Nothings have capped off their first decade by releasing their best album yet. It’s encouraging to hear how comfortable they sound together, how powerful they are in a room crashing and bashing their way through these cathartic songs.
The intensity of Cloud Nothings’s sonics—all of the wailing noises a guitar can produce as well as hard-hitting, double-time drumming—provide a cathartic outlet with which to confront the pains of self-definition and personal growth in an ever-amorphous world.
The Shadow I Remember perfectly encapsulates everything the band do so well, and hints at what might be to come.
Raw and uncompromising, yet always harbouring a degree of melody, it’s the product of ten years of learning, and succeeds in deftly balancing subtle nuance with a sense of uncompromising aggression.
The album squeezes 11 songs into 33 minutes, with plenty of space for little experiments and faithful rockers.
As the Cleveland band returns to Electrical Audio at full force, they retain their penchant for rueful concision and world-weary chronicles of pandemic existence.
It’s loud for the sake of being loud, as if Baldi feels like he needs to appease the crowd who dismissed his riskier moves on Life Without Sound by making another Attack on Memory, rather than keep pushing forward.
Perhaps it’s the run that Cloud Nothings have had, but The Shadow I Remember suggests something is incomplete, the band failing to consistently scale the heights capable at their gut-punching best.
For better and worse, the Ohio quartet's eighth album speaks to their 10 years in the game, a lack of inventiveness offset by their relentless drive.
The constant frenzied back and forth between power-pop hooks and furious noise, while fun, begins to feel a little repetitive as an inescapable feeling of 'we've been here before' takes hold.
Conocí a Cloud Nothings hace diez años con su disco homónimo, el segundo; en aquel entonces lo vi como una propuesta interesante, necesaria para representar la escena underground del rock de la década pasada. Ahora vuelvo a toparme con ellos gracias a AOTY, y es triste hasta cierto punto el cómo se quedaron encasillados en su estilo. The Shadow I Remember inclusive parece un álbum debut, desde mi punto de vista; y es que todas las ideas ya usadas por ... read more
Feels very derivitive and over-performed, as well as clunky. It isn't horrible, but you'd be forgiven if you confused this record with any other indie rock album from the 90s or early 2000s.
The riffs on this album are some of Cloud Nothing's best in my opinion. "Open Rain" and "A Longer Moon" are good examples of that. Dylan's melodies aren't as catchy as they were on Life Without Sound, but he does explore a few different vocal styles. "Nothing Without You' has a falsetto chorus, and many other songs have gut wrenching shouting, in Kurt Cobain fashion. The last three songs on this record are a highlight for me as well. "It's Love" is short ... read more
Me gusta el sonido de esta banda, y de este álbum, aunque un poco triste de no poder disfrutar de toda su discografia, este álbum es bueno y está bien construido lo recomendaría para escuchar y explorar con mucha calma.
1 | Oslo 4:08 | 67 |
2 | Nothing Without You 3:18 | 86 |
3 | The Spirit Of 2:30 | 74 |
4 | Only Light 2:37 | 80 |
5 | Nara 2:28 | 73 |
6 | Open Rain 3:01 | 68 |
7 | Sound Of Alarm 3:03 | 78 |
8 | Am I Something 3:26 | 62 |
9 | It's Love 1:31 | 63 |
10 | A Longer Moon 2:51 | 92 |
11 | The Room It Was 3:15 | 93 |
#24 | / | The Alternative |
#31 | / | No Ripcord |