Review Summary: The latest installment of a fantastic musical journey
When one considers its entirety, Cloudkicker’s discography really is a joy. The progressions within it are charmingly coherent and it is uplifting to see an instrumental artist present a sizable body of work that manages to be both diverse and extremely distinctive. Project mastermind (and sole member) Ben Sharp takes aspects that are very common in modern progressive metal and post rock, such as technical riffing and rhythms, powerful crescendos and an underlying epic scope, and presents them in a manner that is unmistakably his own. One of the most rewarding parts of the project is the way that the frequency of its releases (approximately one per year) allows the listener to notice subtle changes in Sharp’s preferences for composition, production and arrangement in between albums. From these changes, one can pick out trends in his discography, and it can be good fun to guess the sound of upcoming material based on these trends; with the exception of
Let Yourself Be Huge (a beautifully simple album that was mostly acoustic), every Cloudkicker release is a coherent follow-up to the album before it that generally satisfies without being greatly surprising. Enter
Little Histories.
Little Histories has the task of following
Subsume, which was effectively a display of heavy progressions that favoured warm atmospheres over intensity. Given that
Little Histories barely clears the twenty minute mark, one might expect a slightly more urgent outing, but if anything it is even less frantic than
Subsume; the songs here are just as evenly paced, but they lack the occasional vigorous flurry that made
Subsume so powerful (for example the final climax on
He would be riding on the subway….) There are certainly moments that hint at what might be an intense outburst of some sort, most notably the progressions in
Hassan, but these never explode in the way the Cloudkicker of yesteryear would have done. This is by no means a criticism; it is just important to establish that
Little Histories forgoes a lot of the aspects that made many of its predecessors so powerful.
Given this, it is important to determine exactly what kind of a release
Little Histories is. The best comparison with another Cloudkicker album is probably
Portmanteau, which relied strongly on groove and atmospheres of breathtaking grandeur rather than specific moments of musical catharsis and the progressions towards them. Respective to this,
Little Histories has much in common with
Portmanteau, most notably the entirety of
Chameleon and
Digital Lightning’s earth-shaking outro. This has a lot of potential – after all, since
Subsume was often considered the
Beacons of Cloudkicker’s more recent, mellow phase and filled the title admirably, why shouldn’t
Little Histories do just as good a job in the role of
Portmanteau?
Unfortunately, there is something missing.
Portmanteau is my favourite Cloudkicker release due to its awe-inspiring energy and whilst
Little Histories is by no means without impetus, it lacks the unbelievable force of songs such as
Fourteen Nights. There is nothing majorly wrong with any of these songs, but they often feel undeveloped or compositionally sparse and (I bet you saw this coming) don’t have the intensity to make up for it.
Sky Guide is an exhibit of everything wrong about this release; it displays the classic ‘Cloudkicker atmosphere’ in a relaxed context that conveys a soothing but upbeat vibe and even manages to innovate a little (if you’ve ever wondered what a Cloudkicker song with vocoder in it would sound like, your wishes have been answered). It’s pretty, melodic and nicely produced – but when it ends, the listener is very much aware that they just heard three minutes of a single idea that didn’t really go anywhere. Similarly,
Parliament is an atmospheric intro that recalls Sharp’s fondness for simple melodies as found in
Let Yourself Be Huge, but it comes across as tame and fails to leave much of an impression behind. Finally,
Hassan is one of those songs that seems to be verging on a climax for most of its running time but never reaches it. However, it has a saving grace in that its two progressions are fraught with tension in a dark manner that is uncommon to Cloudkicker; it evokes the feeling of a gathering storm and becomes distinctive thereby.
However, there are some parts of
Little Histories that are highly successful.
Chameleon is a fun song with a delicious low-end groove that brings
Portmanteau’s thundering closer
God Be With Ye to mind. It goes through a few changes and remains fresh and interesting throughout. Similarly,
Digital Lightning is a Cloudkicker gem; the first couple of minutes could have come straight out of either
Portmanteau or
Subsume’s stronger sections, and the riffage that I mentioned earlier is Ben Sharp at his best, although it sounds more like an organic jam than one might expect from a musician whose work resounds with precision and careful preparation. The song’s finale is the only real climax of the album, and it does not disappoint. Finally, there is the bonus track
Signal/Noise, which I have completely disregarded in my criticism up to this point, since it was a Christmas single from a few years ago and is more of an added extra than a part of this album. If you haven’t heard it already, this is a fantastic song that contains pretty much everything that makes Cloudkicker great today – there are happy, energetic melodies everywhere, the atmosphere is all warm and fuzzy (yes, it is so warm and fuzzy that I can describe it thusly in a serious review) and the climax is excellent. It can only be downloaded alongside the rest of the album, and it’s well worth it.
So, whilst
Little Histories is neither a highlight nor a failure in the grand scheme of Cloudkicker’s discography, it is another small step forwards. A side-effect in eschewing much of its potential for intensity is that it may be appealing for those intrigued by Cloudkicker but deterred by the relentless urgency that the early albums tend to demonstrate. However, many fans may find it somewhat underdeveloped and lacking in the knack that Ben Sharp usually has for overwhelming his listeners throughout the entire duration of his albums. It’s certainly worth a listen, but it’s hardly Cloudkicker’s finest outing.
