Cloud Nothings’ prolific lo-fi pop is the brainchild of Dylan Baldi, a Cleveland, Ohio native who was still in his teens when the buzz about his music started. Baldi was majoring in audio recording at college when he dropped out to focus on the music he was making at home. After a few months, he uploaded the songs “Hey Cool Kid” and “Whaddaya Wanna Know” to his MySpace page, which led to gigs with Woods and Real Estate, and 2010 singles released via Group Tightener and Old Flame Records. That year, Cloud Nothings also released a split cassette with Campfires and the Turning On EP. On the strength of all this music, Baldi signed to Carpark in the U.S. and to Wichita Records in the U.K.; Turning On was reissued with selected tracks from his other singles.
Along with dates with Wavves, Titus Andronicus, and Best Coast, Baldi began work on Cloud Nothings’ full-length debut in Baltimore, Maryland’s Copycat Building studio with producer Chester Gwazda. The results of those sessions became Cloud Nothings, which arrived in January 2011. Later that year, Baldi and his band went into the studio with Steve Albini; the result of these sessions was 2012’s much rawer, heavier Attack on Memory. That July, the Live @ the Grog Shop EP, which captured a particularly blistering set from Cloud Nothings’ tour, was released. Following the completion of their heavy touring schedule, Baldi took some time to put the finishing touches on new material. Soon after, the band headed into a Hoboken, New Jersey studio with producer John Congleton to lay down tracks for the trio’s fourth album, Here and Nowhere Else, which arrived in 2014. That year, Baldi collaborated with Wavves’ Nathan Williams on No Life for Me, a split album released by Williams’ Ghost Ramp label in 2015. Cloud Nothings returned with new music in 2017. Life Without Sound was a more polished-sounding set recorded in El Paso, Texas with producer John Goodmanson.
WEDNESDAY 30 JANUARY
THEKLA BRISTOL The Grove, Bristol BS1 4RB Doors 7:00pm Ages 14+
Cloud Nothings was founded in a Cleveland basement, the one-man recording project of Dylan Baldi, an unassuming, then 18-year-old student of song with a remarkable ear for melody. Prolific from the start, Baldi’s early work was rough but immediate: crudely recorded, spring-loaded spasms of Buzzcocks-informed pop that quickly found an online following among the lo-fi-inclined. When an opportunity presented itself to open a small show in Brooklyn, Baldi abandoned a still-in-progress final project to be there. The gamble paid off.
In 2010, Carpark unveiled Turning On, a retrospective introduction that combined early 7″ singles and the full-length debut (a limited release on …cassette and vinyl) from which it took its name. The following year, Cloud Nothings made its proper Carpark debut with a thrilling self-titled LP that found Baldi in a studio for the first time, shedding the many layers of hiss and distortion that had once obscured (or enhanced) his every hook. What followed was an unexpected breakthrough, 2012’s Attack on Memory, an album that very loudly (with the help of producer Steve Albini) announced the arrival of Cloud Nothings as the sound of more than just Baldi: Caustic and cathartic, it marked the first time Baldi wrote with and for his longtime touring band, drummer Jayson Gerycz, bassist TJ Duke and since departed guitarist Joe Boyer. While its rightly acclaimed and hastily recorded follow-up, 2014’s Here and Nowhere Else refined and expanded upon the volcanic interplay that galvanized its predecessor, it also found Baldi realizing his potential as a singer and the leader of an undeniably great rock band.
Which brings us to Life Without Sound, his most polished and outwardly reflective set of songs to date. Workshopped over the course of a year with his bandmates, it’s an album rich in both worldly insight and incandescent detail. Smart, nuanced, and immensely listenable, this is guitar-driven pop as it should be—conceived by a songwriter who continues to sound like one of the finest of his generation.
THURSDAY 16 MARCH
THEKLA BRISTOL The Grove, Bristol BS1 4RB Doors 7:00pm Ages 14+
Cloud Nothings’ prolific lo-fi pop is the brainchild of Dylan Baldi, a Cleveland, Ohio native who was still in his teens when the buzz about his music started. Baldi was majoring in audio recording at college when he dropped out to focus on the music he was making at home. After a few months, he uploaded the songs “Hey Cool Kid” and “Whaddaya Wanna Know” to his MySpace page, which led to gigs with Woods and Real Estate, and 2010 singles released via Group Tightener and Old Flame Records. That year, Cloud Nothings also released a split cassette with Campfires and the Turning On EP. On the strength of all this music, Baldi signed to Carpark in the U.S. and to Wichita Records in the U.K.; Turning On was reissued with selected tracks from his other singles.
Along with dates with Wavves, Titus Andronicus, and Best Coast, Baldi began work on Cloud Nothings’ full-length debut in Baltimore, Maryland’s Copycat Building studio with producer Chester Gwazda. The results of those sessions became Cloud Nothings, which arrived in January 2011. Later that year, Baldi and his band went into the studio with Steve Albini; the result of these sessions was 2012’s much rawer, heavier Attack on Memory. That July, the Live @ the Grog Shop EP, which captured a particularly blistering set from Cloud Nothings’ tour, was released. Following the completion of their heavy touring schedule, Baldi took some time to put the finishing touches on new material. Soon after, the band headed into a Hoboken, New Jersey studio with producer John Congleton to lay down tracks for the trio’s fourth album, Here and Nowhere Else, which arrived in 2014. That year, Baldi collaborated with Wavves’ Nathan Williams on No Life for Me, a split album released by Williams’ Ghost Ramp label in 2015. Cloud Nothings returned with new music in 2017. Life Without Sound was a more polished-sounding set recorded in El Paso, Texas with producer John Goodmanson.
Plus very special guests:
THE HOTELIER
Massachusetts’ the Hotelier began life at the high school in their hometown of Dudley. Lead singer Christian Holden met Chris Hoffman, Zack Shaw, and Sam Frederick in 2009, and the band — who were originally called the Hotel Year but would later change it to the Hotelier to become easier to find online and avoid confusion with actual hotels in the area — released their debut EP the same year. Entitled We Are All Alone, it was relatively unknown outside of their home state, but paved the way for their debut full-length, It Never Goes Out, in 2011. Written when the band were between the ages of 16 to 18, and still under the name The Hotel Year, the album garnered some attention but remained relatively unknown until the band gained renown with their subsequent release. 2014’s Home, Like Noplace Is There saw the band develop a distinctly emo revival sound, and led to one journalist naming the Hotelier, along with Foxing, as one of the two bands leading the emo revival. 2015 saw the band perform at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, as well as supporting La Dispute and Title Fight on their co-headlining tour. In early 2016, a video trailer featuring the single “Goodness, Pt. 1” heralded the impending release of a new LP. Following a second single, “Soft Animal,” the Hotelier’s third album Goodness was released in May of that year.
MONDAY 11 DECEMBER
THEKLA BRISTOL The Grove, Bristol BS1 4RB Doors 7:30pm Ages 14+
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