Cloud Cult
Light Chasers
Rating: 4.5/5.0
Label: Rebel Group
After releasing 2008′s Feel Good Ghosts, frontman Craig Minowa said it would be a long time before another Cloud Cult album, and even indicated there may never be another one. The sigh of relief: we only had to wait two years – and it was certainly worth it. Light Chasers, Cloud Cult’s eighth album, is the most grandiose, epic creation Minowa and his environmentally friendly entourage have ever produced. The vast dome of airy production paints the album’s impressionistic compositions with the necessary layers of gumption that Feel Good Ghosts lacked. This arena-scale sound is just what the band needed, a new home to complement their ever-evolving attitude.
Most of Cloud Cult’s releases were essentially products of mourning after Craig and co-Cult member Connie Minowa’s son passed away in 2002. If Feel Good Ghosts was about rebirth, Light Chasers finally finds the Minowas in the light of life. “I am alive/ I promise I’m a well intentioned explosion/ Here comes the light/ Give me that light/ Today we give ourselves to the fire,” Minowa belts out in “The Departure – Today We Give Ourselves to the Fire.” The haunting and reflective “The Escape – Running With the Wolves” sums up the band’s creative arc even better: “And we were running/ For a reason/ For the burning, in our veins/ And we were running/ For a reason/ We just need to get away/ I need to feel something different for just a little while.” Perhaps it’s their new child that lifts the emotional constraints, offering the music an earnest sense of optimism, which is the defining quality of Light Chasers’ freshness. The entire album, constructed on a blank slate of consciousness, brims with acceptance.
The album flows freely and efficiently, every song complementing the next like chapters in a novel. It doesn’t matter that the band plows through genres and moods like a roll call. The fist-pumper “The Invocation – You’ll Be Bright” injects us with a satiating rock fix before segueing into its instrumental companion piece, “The Birth (The Journey to the Light p. 2),” and then “The Baby – You Were Born,” a minimalist folk ode to their new child. “The Strength – Forces of the Unseen” combines frantic, riveting string passages with singer-songwriter exuberance and rock aesthetics, a prime demonstration of Minowa’s various trademarks merging into something greater than their individual elements. Cloud Cult’s roller-coaster ride of quiet passages and forte explosions roll naturally with book-ending themes, musical keys and purpose, every moment of Light Chasers living up to its potent potential.
Cloud Cult has always carried the stigma of being compared to other acts- the Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse, the Polyphonic Spree – a subtle resemblance of these artists still lingers within Light Chasers, but more than ever, Cloud Cult sounds like Cloud Cult. At heart, Minowa is a singer-songwriter, something his music always reflected. Here, it’s on a most grand level of full-blown string accompaniments, rock outbursts, and electronica pepperings, a climactic culmination of everything previous albums have suggested. Best enjoyed as a linear experience, Light Chasers breathes new life into a band that has finally chosen to embrace the future.
by Jory Spadea
Key Tracks: You’ll Be Bright (Invocation p.1), The Escape-Running with Wolves, The Strength- Forces of the Unseen, Arrival- There is So Much Energy in Us
