It’s my favorite record of the year so far, though it’s difficult to really explain why. I’ve never felt completely comfortable writing about all these songs, not having any real training in music or music-writing, and I’ve never found that as true as with this record. I’ve spent over two months listening to The Meaning of 8 by Cloud Cult, trying to figure out how it burrows so far inside me, why I can’t stop listening, and how in the world I can convey these things if I even understood them myself.
After all that, I’m not sure I’m any closer to an answer, so you may be better served simply buying the record for yourself and experiencing it un-mediated rather than reading my scattered thoughts.
Rarely has the feeling of a whole world coming apart at the seams been captured so perfectly. Indeed, I haven’t heard a more affecting record dealing with loss since Electro-Shock Blues from the Eels (one of my all-time favorite albums). Here, the loss is singer Craig Minowa’s son, Kaiden (who is also the missing subject of the wrenching “Your 8th Birthday”), but the message is quite similar. Electro-Shock Blues took the listener deep into the morass of pain and loss before finally acknowledging the hope that is possible when one emerges from the Novocain-infused dream. For all its twists and turns, The Meaning of 8 brings us to the same conclusion: if every day is a good day to die, so also is it a good day to face the pain.
The best moments engulf you with cellos, trumpets and flutes, staccato guitar bursts, waves of sound that crash around you, a caressing dissonance. Your heart rises, you discover a lump your throat and your eyes go distant. This is music that makes you believe in a greater truth, a meaning that transcends our limited experience. Call it God, call it the universe, call it what you will, it is the reason why we continue to struggle, to find ourselves within the madness. Accordingly, perhaps the finest moment on the record is the repeated lines from “Take Your Medicine:” “Remind, remind that it’s bigger than me / Dissolve, dissolve into evergreens.”
Even when the touch is light, there is a choral feel, as if it is a shared experience. Still, for such busy songs, there is a tremendously organic feel. You cannot force yourself onto the music, you must let it reveal itself. If you have the patience, it will blossom and grow. Because each piece fits so seamlessly into the next, you can almost get lost inside them. After hearing “Chemicals Collide” dozens of times, I still could not possibly tell you how it is over 3 minutes long – it feels like a single moment of beauty, an unfolding of sound outside of time.
This is the case with many songs, as they remind me of sonic illusions – a circular chain of notes that appear to rise in pitch but loop back on themselves. But while such illusions are usually linear progressions, The Meaning of 8 is more a test of chaos theory, as jams layer upon each other and buffet back and forth.
Now, I’ve never had much patience with jam-bands, and Cloud Cult isn’t one, precisely. But they are far closer than I ever thought I would enjoy. There’s a looseness, a freedom on a number of tracks, that gives contrast to the tightly wound and delicately balanced songs elsewhere. However, if this is a “jam” it is far more melodic than you’d ever expect – witness the ebbs and flows of Minowa’s voice on “Chain Reaction.”
This is a very weird record, and very emotional. While it has more than enough great hooks and beautiful melodies to be enjoyed simply for that, to truly experience it you must give yourself up to the deaf girl, the Alien Christ, the lamentations and exhortations, the death marches, the numerology, the mythology. In recognition of this, while I don’t mean to exaggerate and you can take this with a grain of salt… I hear more Neutral Milk Hotel here than I have in a decade. I’m not saying we’ve got another In the Aeroplane Over the Sea on our hands, but I’m not quite ready to say we haven’t either.
And while I’ve promised to give up on Arcade Fire references, let me make one here, though in a different sense than most. Everyone and their kid brother tries to mimic the sound instead of the feeling. Not so here. Cloud Cult don’t really sound like Arcade Fire at all. But they possess so much certainty, such a unique vision, that they transcend all easy definitions, just as Funeral did.
As if all that wasn’t enough, they are also perhaps the most eco-friendly band I’ve encountered: buying credits to cover the energy used on their tours, donating a portion of their profits to environmental protection organizations. The record was even put out on the band’s own label (Earthology Records), known as the ‘world’s most environmentally friendly not-for-profit record label.’ And they also have a fantastic live show.