Album Review: Cloud Cult - Light Chasers

I grew up in Southern California in the 1990s and was witness to the rise of teen-targeted pop-punk as a national hit-making trend. One of the members of Blink-182 was expelled from my high school and, like most of my classmates, I viewed Blink-182 as an iconic band when Dude Ranch broke onto the Billboard charts. Yet I distinctly remember the moment when I realized that the band was full of shit: the release of 'What's My Age Again?' off 1999's Enema of the State. Listening to a near-30 year old unfold the ultimate douchebag tale of snubbing a hot chick and then posing as the police to scare her mother was about as asinine as near-40 year old millionaire Billie Joe Armstrong penning a concept album about disillusioned youth in the 21st century. Of course, this didn't stop Enema... from eventually going five-times platinum, but it did portend a sudden shift for Blink-182 into exclusive wheelhouse-swinging pop-punk which found diminishing returns (and fans) on future albums.

Cloud Cult, as a band, has existed in a similar way for years, specializing in gut-punching tales of loss and songs of hopeful redemption that put John Darnielle to shame. Yet with the passage of time and removal from the catalyst for Craig Minowa's initial bout of brutally personal songwriting (see: child, death of) that earned Cloud Cult a following between 2003 and 2006, the sincerity and motivation is less clear. Cloud Cult is feeling more like a chore than a vibrant creative entity these days, especially on their new album. Light Chasers trudges the same abstract territory as ever: love, loss, mortality, redemption, yet with the same diminishing returns as Mark Hoppus, nearly old enough for regular prostate exams, bemoaning the fact that Caller ID stunts his ability to make prank calls. Light Chasers is Cloud Cult's Enema Of The State, just without the marketing power needed to ram it up the charts.

Of course, Light Chasers isn't without its charms and high points. 'The Baby - You Were Born' is as genuine a sentiment as anything Craig has recorded in the past 4 years; it's the kind of song that I might someday sing to my own children as I put them to sleep. But that sincerity is followed by the strange, hissing, confusing jungle-clamor of 'The Lessons - Exploding People', where an obnoxious robotic voice sings gems like "do what you do because what is done is done". And at the song's halfway point, a chugging, Californication-era Red Hot Chili Peppers bassline kicks the door down for all of 25 seconds before radio static and hissing takes over, bleeding into the next track and a half. 'The Mission: Unexplainable Stories', at least until the vocals kick in, is wonderfully relaxing, but it's immediately followed by 'The Departure: Today We Give Ourselves to the Fire', which is the exact opposite of everything that made 'When Water Comes To Life' one of the standout tracks from 2008's Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes), even as it co-opts that track's theme. And I can't be the only person to realize that most of 'The Invocation (p.1) - You'll Be Bright' (if you're getting sick of the naming convention, you're not alone) is a few angsty sighs away from being a later Dashboard Confessional track, with all the over-the-top crescendos and platitudes that entails.

From start to finish, Light Chasers is spotty, ho-hum, and suspiciously disingenuous, confusing emotive shouting and zillions of instruments with real sentiment. The Cloud Cult catalog is just too large at this point to justify delving into the slag pile of Light Chasers for the few promising geodes hidden underneath. What Blink-182 found as their album sales sagged into the new millennium and their demographic grew up and moved on is applicable here: swinging within your wheelhouse is an alright maneuver, but you can't expect fans to find the same routine exciting the second, third, or fourth time around. It's much harder to hit someone who knows your reach.