Clouds "Legendary Demo" (Hydra Head)
By Lucas Salg
Monday. Mar 05, 3:34 PM
Sincere boogie rock or very talented joke?

Another of the multitude of side projects spilling out of Boston space-rock heroes Cave In, Clouds finds guitarist Adam McGrath indulging a heretofore unacknowledged jones for what they dub “party grunge”: a blues-punk-metal mishmash that borrows liberally from old ZZ Top and MC5. If there ever were a musical equivalent of shotgunning an entire six-pack of Old Style, doing five consecutive bong rips, and then puking all over yourself, it would undoubtedly be Clouds.

Homage or parody? Are they being sincere in their professed love for ‘70s boogie rock or are Clouds merely a very talented joke? Who knows, who cares. The wink-nudge album title may provide a hint toward Clouds’ true intentions. Any way you slice it, what you have here is 40 minutes of raucous Motorhead-style all-cylinders-firing rock with a capital, beer-soaked “R.” McGrath is a hell of a guitar player, as evidenced by his numerous adept solos, and the band are obviously having a blast. But the problem is, I wasn’t.

Clouds are great at rehashing a very particular era, but they’re not great songwriters, and sincere or not, the act wears very thin very quickly without the aid of strong songs. Most of the songs are totally indistinguishable, save for the wildly ill-advised closing number “Quartulli Dub,” which stretches out for 20 minutes (that’s half of the album’s total running time, mind you) and has a god damn saxophone solo for fuck’s sake. The vocals are mostly unintelligible shouting, with nary a hook to be found. There’s just nothing to grab onto here.

Color me bummed on this one. I dunno, if you’re out at some dive bar, chain-smoking and pounding PBRs with your hipster pals, you might get a lot more out of this than I did. Personally, if I’m ever in the mood for this kind of throwback blues-metal, I’ll just put on some ZZ Top because it sounds better coming from a bunch of dudes who lived that scene than a bunch of modern-day hardcore kids who fucking didn’t.
www.hydrahead.com

Lucas Salg

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