Link: http://www.cloudcult.com/home.cfm

Cloud Cult returns once again with a new album that is as brilliant as its title. Light Chasers begins humbly, like a sleepy giant, as the strings awaken the senses and “Unexplainable Stories” explodes like crystals capturing every ray of goodness that this band can offer.

“Today We Give Ourselves To The Fire” is one of the best indie rock songs I have heard. Power, fury, and defiance joins hands to blast through this anthemic number.

What amazes me with each Cloud Cult album, and is especially apparent here, is how Craig Minowa’s mind works and how he and the band interprets the music and makes it move forward flawlessly.

And if a song does not cause a gleam in the eye, like for example “The Exploding People,” which is to me a lesser song of the whole, the album moves so fluidly, it’s easy to wade through the songs that don’t make as much an impression on you until you get to the ones that do.

“Running With The Wolves” has that U2 step-building concept where the guitars just keep reaching higher and the sound grows beyond the stretches of where the song began. “Forces Of The Unseen” dims it down and offers a more intimate approach before ending the song back in the heavens of musical bliss.

As much as been said, it is difficult to give you a firm idea as to what this album is really about. I would have to dig into every song and bear forth descriptive measures that any review is simply incapable of. They go to great lengths to capture every facet of what they are really capable of and produce an album that you have to hear for yourself to believe its expansive scope.

Light Chasers is cause for celebration.

Link: http://www.cloudcult.com/

Cloud Cult has been like a mythic figure overshadowing the independent music scene for a better part of the 21st Century. Labeled one of the greenest bands in the industry, making a huge impact with their 2007 release The Meaning of 8, and nominated for Artist of the Year at the Minnesota Music Awards in 2004, to name a few.

That nomination came shortly after the release of Aorora Borealis and the end of two albums that intimately dealt with the loss of leader Craig Minowa’s two-year-old son.

They Live On The Sun is a rollercoaster ride through the stages of grieving. You have the delirium of “Moon’s Thoughts,” the anger of “Radio Fodder,” and the contemplation of “I’m Not Gone” that splices in audio samples of his son talking and playing. It’s an incredibly sobering moment to experience as the feeling really hits home on “Took You For Granted,” as Minowa sings and sobs about his son. It might be the saddest song in existence.

Beyond the endearment of this album it’s Aurora Borealis that is the better release of the two and rightfully deserving not just a nomination, but one of the more interesting and unique indie albums out there. Minowa is still dealing with loss, but you have a sense of resolution in this album and better structure to their indie experimental creature that is this multi-instrumental band.

So what if “Alone At A Party In A ghost Town” sounds like mid-’90s Blur meets Nirvana. It fits in context with “All Alone Together” and their musical take on the mystery of the unknown. Minowa’s fragile-and-cracking falsetto feels even more haunting with the piercing cuts of strings while maintaining a sense of anger within his trying to understand life and the universe that surrounds it. “Have we gone wrong or are we growing.”

Aurora Borealis is a realization and an album that musically breaks free of simple constructs. Bleeding in acoustic with electrified chords, weird samples, weirder drum effects, the noisy and ethereal of “Northern Lights,” and the random layers of electronic hums on “The Sparks And Spaces Between Your Cells.” The album ends with “Beautiful Boy” and a reminder that there is no true resolution in Minowa’s world, only awareness and the conclusion that his son is gone and the closer we get to understanding it all, the farther we really are.