Rating: 
If you’re looking for some sort of genre where you can place Cloudland Canyon, well, you’re probably best just placing it alongside soudnscape music–then again, some will want to lump it in with noise-pop. On the newest effort, Fin Eaves, it’s really a blend of both, but there is one that sticks out predominantly like a sore thumb as the album draws to a close.
The first seven minutes of the album really doesn’t do much to distinguish anything for the listener. It’s made up of two songs, neither of which will stand out as either a single, or as something overbearingly musical. On “No One Else Around” you can clearly hear the faintest bit of warmth, due solely on the vocals, but its coated in extensive electronic dabbling and atmospheric noise. It’s probably a great piece of sonic experimentation, but personally, that’s not really what I’m looking for nowadays. The fact that it goes through to the second song without me even noticing is either pure genius, or just lazy album editing. Really, you can have a song that’s just 7 minutes.
“Sister” is the first song that actually resembles a bit of a song. You can kind of make out the vague lyrics, or at least you can hear the word “sister” in there, so it leads you to come to that conclusion. There’s even some faint percussion hiding beneath the squalls of noise that goes nowhere and returns to nowhere. It all just seems like directionless drivel, going somewhere, yet really not going anywhere special. It’s much the same case when you get to “Pinlike,” as the song begins with sort of that psychedelic rythm and a bit of haunting vocal. Then, its like someone just presssed record, and looped over and over for about five minutes, and honestly, its a bit excruciating.
So apparently it’s like we’ve all just become huge Steve Reich fans, enjoying the fact that looipng tapes and adding textural noises can be called art. I get that, and I get the allusion to various levels of “gaze” music, but very few people have been able to pull this off successfully, let alone Mr. Reich himself, thus why he is considered agenius. There’s a great bit of affection for this sort of thing, and its understandable….but listenable? This person is leaning towards an emphatic no.
Cloudland Canyon, despite the better efforts, haven’t really given you much to listen to as you browse your way through Fin Eaves, searching for something redeeming. If you wan’t this sound, it seems like all you need to do is take a boom-box, toss in your old Erasure tapes, wrap it in plastic for protection, and stick inside of the noisiest washer/dryer combo you can find. You’ll end up with a record that sounds a lot like this one, and one you will immediately want to return. Sorry to be harsh, but some projects are better off confined to your bedroom. That being said, bet this sounds good if I’m baked.
If you don’t like Erasure, I don’t care. I do. The lady friends of my younger days liked Erasure, so I liked Erasure. …at least that was my excuse to the metal-head, skater bros friends I had. One of the best shows I saw last year was Erasure at the very same venue, so I had high expectations. And to help meet those expectations, instead of a DJ, the lads form London brought along LA’s Superhumanoids as the opener.
