CLOUDS CAN: Leave (ALTERNATIVE ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

It will have taken almost twenty years for Clouds Can to give a successor to "Per Aspera" (1998). Clouds Can is a German band made up of two multi-instrumentalists, Dominik Hüttermann and Thomas Thielen, the latter being better known by the readers of Music Waves under the very short pseudonym of T.

If Thomas Thielen got us used to a complex progressive rock with frequent changes of themes in T's albums, the compositions he has signed for Clouds Can are much simpler and shorter. It would be risky here to speak about progressive rock, let speak about eclectic rock, art rock or art pop. If the structure of the titles follows rather closely that of a song, the songwriting remains nevertheless very sophisticated, using for example introductions without real relation with the main theme or playing a lot on the nuances.

This is one of the main reproaches I will make to an album very interesting otherwise. If I often point out artists who forget that nuances are essential in music, Clouds Can falls into the opposite excess, sometimes passing without warning from the most confidential pianissimo to a thundering fortissimo, inciting the listener to play with his remote control by lowering and increasing the sound at the risk of losing a part of the musical intentions of the authors.

Let's admit that this little inconvenience is largely compensated by the omnipresent vocal presence of Thomas Thielen. The slightly dragging and melancholic timbre of the German touches without difficulty the sensitive chord of the listener, in particular when he flies in high notes almost desperate. Thrills are guaranteed! The music is often a wall of sound where keyboards, guitars, choirs and percussions make a dense sound mass, sometimes too much ('This Dream of Me', 'All We Are I Am Not'), on which rises a drum kit that ensures complex rhythms and often against the beat.

The melancholy oozes from all the tracks, whether it is from the contrasted and tortured 'Life Is Strange', from 'On The Day You Leave' whose delicate piano-voice beginning announces a rise in paroxysmal crescendo, or from the vaporous rock of 'Like Any Angel' which reminds David Bowie by its singular atmosphere and Soup for the progression of its density. If 'This Dream of Me' is quite linear, the prize of strangeness goes to 'Insomnia', jolted and uncomfortable, which will certainly leave you with a feeling of uneasiness.

"Leave" is one of those albums that are immediately accessible but that the listener rediscovers with each new listening with an increasing satisfaction. - Official website

CLOUDS CAN

LEAVE

PROGRESSIVE PROMOTION

ALTERNATIVE ROCK