November 13
Cloud Nothings
The Waiting Room
WaitingRoomLounge.com
Cleveland’s Cloud Nothings infamously started in songwriter Dylan Baldi’s parents’ basement as an outlet for the high school social outcast to imagine a future as a famous musician. Signing to Carpark Records and constant touring sparked the band’s promising future that’s since traversed Replacements power pop and noisy, Steve Albini-produced punk. On the band’s October LP Last Building Burning, Baldi finds the most cohesive balance yet between the power pop of his early recordings and the angsty, brick-breaking post-hardcore of albums like Attack On Memory. Album cuts like “In Shame” are somehow as brooding as a high schooler isolating themselves in a bathroom stall, but as fluidly catchy as Pinkerton-era Weezer. But for the most part, the album is overwhelmingly dark, dealing in hopelessness and questioning the point of sticking around for the future. No matter the genre classifications, though, Last Building Burning proves Baldi has songwriting chops that, if it were 1992, would place him among Generation X’s most potent rock voices. Even today, Baldi’s despair echoes that of the teens and twenty-somethings who have yet to find what life has in store for them and are afraid they never will. Cloud Nothings plays The Waiting Room this month, and tickets are $15. Find more info at waitingroomlounge.com.