SAN FRANCISCO — “I thought I would be more than this,” yells Cloud Nothings’ Dylan Baldi throughout the band’s showstopper “Wasted Days.”
As the Cleveland, Ohio, rock trio closed its 65-minute show Sunday at The Independent in San Francisco with a visceral, extended, noisy rendition of the song, it was difficult not to frame its chorus in a larger context.
The band played The Independent as part of what NorCal music lovers have dubbed “Fauxchella.” Since the Indio-based Coachella Music Festival expanded to two weekends in 2012, some artists turn the week into a mini-tour of California, hitting the festival twice and spending the week in between playing venues in Northern California.
Cloud Nothings is just one group among the tidal wave at Coachella. As Baldi croaks from behind his shaggy mop of brown hair, one gets the sense that Cloud Nothings are just one well-placed hit from moving out of the fine print on festival lineups.
The line from “Wasted Days” resonates. Cloud Nothings should be more than they are – Sunday’s show sold out only moments before it began and the group’s 2012 album, Attack on Memory, garnered extensive critical praise.
Their live show also deserves praise. Their jarring aesthetic calls to mind 1980s rockers Hüsker Dü — at once noisy and punky enough to pull off the vamping, cathartic “Wasted Days,” yet tuneful and melodic enough to make the likes of “Fall In” or “Stay Useless” catchy.
Those talents combined Sunday on the likes of “Quieter Today,” where percussionist Jayson Gerycz thundered through the second verse as Baldi pushed his vocal chords to their screeching max.
Yet, in terms of widespread appeal, the Cleveland trio hasn’t quite latched on yet. Although 2014 album Here and Nowhere Else didn’t receive as favorable a critical response, it shows the group’s potential.
In a live setting “I thought I would be more than this” resonated not with the band and its station in the music business, but with the crowd as well. Fans moshed and shoved in a pit near the stage for much of the show, but “Wasted Days” transcended into a singalong also, a strangely unifying statement that the San Francisco crowd found relatable.
If Cloud Nothings keeps playing these kind of shows and writing songs like that, a wider audience may relate soon enough.
Cloud Nothings play Tuesday at The Echo in Los Angeles before returning to Coachella for weekend two Friday.
Setlist
1. Pattern Walks
2. Now Hear In
3. Stay Useless
4. Quieter Today
5. Psychic Trauma
6. Fall In
7. Separation
8. No Thoughts
9. No Future/No Past
10. Giving Into Seeing
11. I’m Not Part of Me
12. Wasted Days
Cloud Nothings bassist TJ Duke performs Sunday at The Independent in San Francisco. (Courtesy photo/Daniel Kielman)
Cloud Nothings perform Sunday at The Independent in San Francisco. (Courtesy photo/Daniel Kielman)
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