All Photos by Abby Fisher
Even before the night’s headliners took the stage, there was an inescapable feeling that something special was in store. Blue lasers bounced off the impressive array of instruments sprawled across the stage. A projector and screen were glowing on one side of the stage, while on the other hung a large empty canvas. Smoke billowed up from the drum kit, slowly engulfing the entire scene. Tense electronics brought the crowd to a fever pitch and finally, with the elastic energy stretched to a breaking point, Cloud Cult’s seven person collective emerged to deliver on all the promise of the evening.
Buried in the darkness of the stage, the journey began with the band surrounding drums on either side of the stage and pounding at them like a pack of starved caveman who’d finally grounded that illusive bison. As they bashed away, they began shouting in unison away from the microphones, creating the voice-inside-your-head effect that highlights “Blessings (Invocation p. 2),” one of the signature tracks from 2010’s sensational Light Chasers. As the band was rifling through the song with energy and precision, that empty canvas hanging in the darkness was given a spotlight. Under it, resident artist Scott West spun the blank slate in circles like a roulette wheel, all the while splattering paint of numerous colors across it. The Craig Minowa-led outfit had effectively thrown down the gauntlet.
“We are giving every last bit that we have,” Minowa stated after roaring through “No One Said It Would Be Easy,” the opener from old favorite Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes) and second bulletpoint on the setlist. This came in one of the rare instances where he engaged his audience without music, noting that this was the last show along the East Coast-leg of the current tour. He also pointed out something that seemed fairly obvious: the band could feel that, with a few shows under their belt, they had fallen into a groove.
As the band roared through tracks – crowd-pleaser “There’s So Much Energy In Us,” “Running With the Wolves,” and the pairing of “The Ghost Inside Our House” and “When Water Comes to Life” introduced as “bluegrassy stuff” – the thing that stood out the most was the chemistry they had with one another. The band as a whole retained a cohesive, positive level of interaction with each other, but it was the individual exchanges that made an even greater impact. Daniel Zamzow, the band’s cellist since just mid-March, would catch approving eyes with violinist Shannon Frid just before diving into a full-scale arrangement, or Minowa would turn his back to the stage to face Arlen Peiffer and the two would lunge back and forth toward one another, all the while nailing their notes and sporting smiles as wide as rivers are long. As flawless as the entire set was, it was this chemistry – coincidentally a regular topic in the band’s lyrics – that resonated the most.
Between groups of songs, the lights would dim to again welcome lasers, smoke, and darkness, effectively bridging from one huge moment to the next – a necessary technique being that many individual songs required such brute energy so as to mandate some sort of inhale/exhale calming period. During these moments, as the band drew out spacial sounds that seemed to bounce off not just one another, but the Black Cat walls as well, the focus would quickly turn back to West, still highlighted and now focused on painting detailed lines and shades. Early on it seemed as though his painting might be a gimmick, just some guy flopping colors onto a canvas to add to the overall aesthetic of the show. But eventually it all came together: a portrait of a woman (who slightly resembled Neytiri from Avatar) that Minowa would go on to praise as one of West’s best works of the tour.
Of a set rich with highlights, Cloud Cult saved the best for their show’s tail end. After an instrumental break, they sprung back into “Unexplainable Stories,” the opening track from Light Chasers and one of the most caffeinated cuts the band has ever recorded. Midway through the song, the band returned to the large tribal drums they had positioned at either end of the stage and again began pummeling them. One by one after that, the band would grab their individual instruments and slowly reapply their own unique layer. Taking in the amount of sounds and techniques that Cloud Cult utilize on record is one thing, but actually seeing it unfold in person makes for a experience that, frankly, needs to be seen in person to truly appreciate.
Two songs later came “The Exploding People,” another cut from Light Chasers that gave Minowa the ability to implement yet another one of his many tricks – vocoder (served up by itself and through a megaphone) — into his booming, dynamic arrangements. Again, it’s one thing to hear this song — a personal favorite — on the record. But up against the band’s live backdrop, the impact swells. A lot of Cloud Cult’s lyrics deal with life from a scientific standpoint. They refer to people as cumulus clouds, suggest humans are born from the soil like plants, delve into the extraterrestrial life, and generally explore the restraints of every day life and how we, as individuals, carry so much more value that our monotonous daily routines may sometimes suggest. It doesn’t take a projection monitor lit up with the image of a man slowly losing his mind behind a computer screen in a cubicle to to convey that point, but seeing it reinforces not just the meaning behind the songs, but the scope of them.
But the best moment of all, the one that put a final stamp on an immaculate performance, came as the band retreated backstage following the first leg of their set. Now of course, encores have become formalities at this point. We all know that when a band announces “this will be our final song,” it really means “this will be our final song… until we catch our breath for two minutes and come back out.” Still, audiences clap and holler to incite their return. But the encore Cloud Cult took was earned. It might have been planned, but the chants of “Cloud Cult! Cloud Cult!” that practically shook the floor of the upstairs venue made it extremely clear that the audience not just wanted a few more songs to get their money’s worth, but that they were truly appreciative of the performance. It was one of those rare moments where an encore feels appropriate.
The band answered the crowd’s catcalls first with “Today We Give Ourselves to the Fire,” an appropriately titled song that begins “put out your hands/put out your hands/put out your hands.” Without prompting, the entire crowd lifted their arms to the sky. It was one final ode to the magnitude of the group’s songs which throughout the night earned unsolicited sing-a-longs (“When Water Comes to Life”) and spontaneous rhythm hand-clapping. Then, with arms still spiked up like a jam-packed human flower garden, the band signed off on their tight, otherworldly exhibition with “You’ll Be Bright (Invocation pt. 2).” But by this point, a performance of this magnitude was no surprise. After all, the promise of something remarkable began even before a single note had a chance to resonate. Ultimately, that promise was not just delivered on, but exceeded.
