Pissing Off To Get Ahead

"I thought / I would / be more / than this…” are the desperate screams of Dylan Baldi in the nine-minute epic Wasted Days, a song that defines the sharp new direction taken by Cleveland, Ohio band Cloud Nothings in their third record, Attack On Memory. Initially the moniker of Baldi's one-man lo-fi pop project of 2009, Cloud Nothings later evolved into a four-piece band. After releasing two records under that brand – Turning On (2010) and the self-titled Cloud Nothings (2011) – Baldi realised that what they were doing just wasn't working.

And so he approached the 2012 release with the intention of attacking the memory of what Cloud Nothings used to be – to be sliced up and forgotten – replacing it with their reincarnated sounds that edge closer towards the aggressive, early '90s, punk rock aesthetic, fuelled by the hatred of their so-called 'failures' and lost time. “People didn't really like the old songs and looking back on them now, I'm not even sure I really like them,” laughs the 21-year-old. “So I just kind of wanted a fresh start but without really changing the band name or anything, or changing much. I just wanted people to be aware that we are doing something a little different than we were before.”

The heavy themes Attack On Memory taps into come from Baldi's experiences with the aforementioned change. Addressing the fragility of time, life's purpose and the feeling of uselessness – topics that may at times carry the stigma of teenage-angst, but in this case, have been maturely crafted – the record runs high on emotional adrenalin. “A lot of Attack On Memory is pretty much about things I was going through, yeah. The band wasn't necessarily doing too great you know for the first two years that we were around just because – well, whatever reason, yeah.”

Baldi dropped out of university in 2009, three months into his saxophone performance major, to pursue the Cloud Nothings' dream. After convincing his parents it was the right thing to do via a seven-page email, he only later realised the difficulty of 'breaking' as an artist and knew he needed to change his game plan in order to make that sacrifice worthwhile.

“I was kind of upset… it's just, what I was really trying to do, it wasn't necessarily working out the way I thought it would. And I wasn't sure what I would end up doing, you know? Because the plans didn't work out. So for a little while I just looked back at how, yeah, it would be really shitty if things continued the way they were – we were just sort of not doing well,” he laughs.

Stepping out on tour with their new material has, however, displeased some. In particular, the audience during one of their support slots, an experience which Baldi found rather amusing as he mentioned via Twitter (sic), “Playing in front of large groups of people who genuinely hate you is actually really fun”. The explanation?

“Yeah, well we just did a tour with this band, and a lot of their fans I think were almost like offended by us,” he chuckles at the memory. “Because we're not cool, we don't like dress nice, we just kind of make loud music and yell. And I think that really upset a lot of people. And it was fun to just look out to the audience and see you know, 100 people just having the worst time of their lives, it was fun to think 'Oh, I can do that! I made these people have a terrible hour'. That was exciting to me, that I had that power.”

Their live show was also at the back of their minds when working on the Albini-produced record – creating flexible song structures to easily jump in an out of while on stage. “I wanted to change it up every time… to keep myself from being bored,” explains the laid-back singer. “The songs are pretty much the same, but there are little parts here and there that are just different every time we play them, to keep things interesting. But otherwise, you know, we got super burned out [last time we toured] and it came to the point where it wasn't even fun. So, it's the reason why we do it to keep things alive and actually exciting.”

Working with producer Steve Albini (Nirvana, PJ Harvey) – notorious for his outlandish opinions and unique way of working in the studio – Baldi was impressed with his contributions.

“It was fun, I like Steve. He stays out of the way, you know? It was basically like recording at home. But, he was an amazing help with just all the most amazing equipment in the world basically. So he made the record sound great. It was really easy. If I ran a studio or something I'd probably do something a lot similar to what he does, where like I don't want to try and impose myself on a band, and he doesn't either. The fact that he doesn't want to impose himself on a band is really cool.”

And the result – a hook-heavy, well-produced beast of an album, featuring the aforementioned Wasted Days – with a sweltering instrumental part that will no doubt blow your face off.

“I never sat down thinking of [that], he chuckles. “But I knew I wanted to make something long because I've never done that before, and I figured to make it long would be to sort of just jam (laughs),” explains Baldi of the nine-minute track. “So I wrote the basic song and then thought about what we could do in this small part. And we just worked it out as a band and it ended up being like a four, five-minute thing, you know, what it is now. And it just sounded really good, so we kept it. Yeah, it was sort of by accident but it worked out really good.” And so with the dramatic change from album number two to three, what's in store for the fourth instalment? “We have a bunch of new songs written already – it's not quite as dramatic of a change but it's definitely not the same record. There are some new [things] going on.”

So, the 21-year-old songwriter who once made the risky choice to drop out of university back in '09 has now invited worldwide buzz and achieved the status of 'making it' as an artist. He must be chuffed, no? “It's pretty weird, you know. I try not to read anything about us or anything like that, but I'm aware of it. I don't really think about it so much. I'm sure in like 20 years I'll look back on it and be like, 'That was weird'.”

Cloud Nothings will be playing the following dates:

Friday 1 February - Laneway, RNA Showgrounds, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 2 February - Laneway, Sydney College Of The Arts, Sydney NSW
Sunday 3 February - Laneway, Footscray Community Arts Centre, Melbourne VIC
Tuesday 5 February - Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne VIC
Wednesday 6 February - Annandale Hotel, Sydney NSW
Friday 8 February - Laneway, Fowler's Live and UniSA West Campus, Adelaide SA
Saturday 9 February - Laneway, Perth Cultural Centre, Perth WA