Didn't You 7" - Cloud Nothings

Didn’t You 7”

Cloud Nothings
Old Flame Records.

SCQ Rating: 75%

That Dylan Baldi, the mastermind behind Cloud Nothings, has Justin Bieber as his top friend on Myspace isn’t completely rooted in irony. Despite the multitude of gaffes such a comparison attracts, both young men are riding waves of hype – one of the underground nature, the other literally everywhere but – and neither knows where their successes will end. For the safer artist of the two, namely the one who isn’t being photographed with a Kardashian, Baldi’s star seems poised to continue rising with his prolific streak as this latest 7” serves his best material yet.

The raw electric guitars that brash head-first into ‘Didn’t You’ may be on the tinny side and that simple keyboard line might call to mind Los Campesinos!, but Baldi’s voice turns open-chord ruckus into unique bedroom-pop blasts. Listen closely enough and the song hints at a number of until-recently-unheralded genres (early 90s radio-rock, surf music) as well as the effortless posturing of hey-day punk. As easily addictive as ‘Didn’t You’ spills from the stereo, inexplicable B-side ‘Even If It Worked Out’ goes one further, occupying the same unstoppable noise-momentum as the previous track but with the especially biting chorus “I’m sorry we can’t be friends / my heart is overrated / I don’t like being alone / but I don’t like being with you”. Add a jangly 80s guitar to run fluently beneath and presto: near-perfect pop.

Admittedly, Cloud Nothings’ style of lo-fi anthems and compressed sonics bodes well on restricted formats like the seven-inch and I question whether Baldi could keep his thrills-per-minute quota up over a full-length. Regardless of how future-proof Cloud Nothings is, the songs on Didn’t You 7” are expressly of the present, to live your high moments by each second. The whole mood of it suggests that what comes next shouldn’t matter.