CLOUD NOTHINGS / HUMAN HEAT / ENOUEMENT | LIVE REVIEW
Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, Wed 10 July
Whether you were to file Enouement under hard-edged emo or mild-mannered melodic hardcore, it would be a field in which they would struggle to stand out. Late additions to this evening’s bill, the quartet are solidly competent rather than inspired or inspirational. A muddy sound mix doesn’t help – the drummer ensures his kit knows it’s had a night out, but little else emerges from the sonic soup with much clarity.
Human Heat [below] are less monochromatic, shifting between straight-up pop-punk and more angular and convoluted math-rock within the same track. But their best song deals with “office jobs and early death”, which feels like a stale subject at a time when there are so many more urgent topics to rail about, and the changes of pace and direction soon start to seem predictable. Punk can and should be many things, but boring is certainly not one of them.
Cloud Nothings [top] are out of the traps so fast they’re barely a blur, thanks largely to Jayson Gerycz. From the moment they kick off with The Echo Of The World, the drummer, who must surely be hooked up to a caffeine drip, sets a blistering pace, leaving songwriter Dylan Baldi and the rest of the band frantically trying to keep up. To sustain the onslaught, material from 2017’s relatively mellow offering Life Without Sound is ditched completely, with the set drawn almost exclusively from Here And Nowhere Else and even more pugnacious recent LP Last Building Burning.
After a while, though, the lack of between-song engagement with the audience and the fact that everything is set to warp speed begins to become draining, and not just for Gerycz. Respite is hard to find – it’s there in the big pop hooks of I’m Not Part Of Me and in Dissolution, the titanic centrepiece of both Last Building Burning and tonight’s setlist, which lives up to its name in breaking down into feedback before its constituent parts slowly but surely coalesce once again.
It was Fugazi’s emergent interest in venturing beyond hardcore punk’s conventional boundaries without sacrificing their principles that made In On The Kill Taker such a thrilling record. As initially impressive as their commitment to maximum velocity is, here’s hoping Dissolution marks the start of a similar journey for Cloud Nothings.
words BEN WOOLHEAD photos SIMON AYRE
