Cloud Cult - "They Live on the Sun"Review
by Josh Lukkes - Blue
Skunk Companion free downloadable MP3s and ordering info at Earthology.net I've heard of people crying when they've seen masterpieces. I was never one of them until Saturday. A CD popped into my mailbox that I couldn't wait to hear. It was the newest release by Cloud Cult, entitled "They Live on the Sun." Never in the history of Rock and Roll has an album's title been such a direct contrast to its content - they may live on the sun, but the album is all moonlight with candles, booze and a piano, dark beyond description, beautiful, intricate, wailing with grief, sometimes guttural, sometimes a sweet windchime on a spring night in May. "They Live on the Sun" is an extended epitaph to Craig Minowa's son, Kaidin, who died Feb. 23, 2002. Every song deals with this in some way or another, providing a gut-wrenching look into death and its corresponding anger, grief, fear, blackhole vortex of anguish. It is not an easy album to listen to. But upon listening to it, there is much to love. The music is inescapably catchy, hooks piled on hooks piled on tempo shifts, melodies, atonal cacaphony, all blended with a healthy dose of fuck you and love. The album is as complex as any contemporary piece of classical music without compromising its integrity as a great Rock and Roll album or seeming trite. Particularly harrowing are the songs "Took You for Granted" and "Sleeping Days PT 2." "Took You for Granted" is a beautiful string and drum arrangement overlaid with Kaidin speaking I love you's and goodbyes, Minowa's lyrics pleading, angry, crying out and sniffles, a cry for help with one hand in heaven and the other on his heart, "I can't help but say they've taken away the biggest think I care for. I live in the black. It's a simple fact, I'm here but I'm not aware." In "Sleeping Days PT 2," Minowa scratches out his wavering lyrics encompanied by an old, out of tune piano. The original "Sleeping Days" is a shimmering, gushy love song to his exwife written ten years ago that skirts the fine line of kitsch with its flowery imagery of tree nymphs and daisies. Not so with Part 2, a grounded, hard look at the death of Kaidin and its aftershocks of emotion and the desire for an afterlife more beautiful than this world, more perfect than any tree bough or blue sky, "I'd like to think your sleeping in a safe little bluebird's nest and I'll protect your memories with the dragons in my head." Not easy, not fluffed, but more honest than a drunk cowboy song or a preacher on Sunday. In all, "They Live On the Sun" is a must have album, the musical equivalent of hanging a Picasso in your living room. The music is as complicated as its subject matter, garbled into a pile of bones and voices at times, at others you can almost feel the clarity rip through you. I can now say I've joined the ranks of those that have wept openly at a pure product of creative genius and raw human emotion. Thanks Craig Minowa, your ability to craft simple elegance makes your pain my pain, your loss my loss, your hopes and fears my hopes and fears. I pray that your player piano doesn't stop anytime soon. |