Track Premiere: Cloud—”Disenchanted”
Posted: by The Editor
Photo by: Carson Lund
It’s both oxymoronic and pleasantly appropriate for Tyler Taormina to continue to call his project Cloud. The L.A. songwriter’s 2013 debut Comfort Songs was stacked with rich, classic-minded indie rock arrangements that stretched upward in both style and scope. “Autumnal guitar record” is the self-proclaimed tag on its Bandcamp page, which is a suitable descriptor. The 11, mostly five-minute-ish tracks on Comfort Sounds recall the dense, chromatically overcast skies of a late-fall afternoon. Plays With Fire, however, is keenly characteristic of the current season. Cloud’s long-awaited sophomore full-length (out 3/9) begins with the picturesque opaqueness of its predecessor, but quickly blows over into a sunny spring morning, exposing a field’s worth of indie-pop blossoms that teem with vibrant colors and exuberant lifeforms. There’s not a cloud in sight.
“Disenchanted” is the first one to let the light in. Its metronome-infused finger snaps emerge out of the foggy reverb that concludes album opener “Happer’s Laugh,” transitioning smoothly into fluttery strums and chipper trip-hop percussion. The warm, open-sounding production of both this track and the rest of Fire is a lot different from the very compact nature of Cloud’s debut. It’s got some of the psych-folk cheeriness of Swing Lo Magellan-era Dirty Projectors (“About to Die” is a solid RIYL for this track in particular), Cocteau Twins-esque shimmer, and shares some of the animated hues that appear on the brilliant new U.S. Girls record.
Comparisons aside, “Disenchanted” is positively lovely.
Stream it below:
Plays With Fire is out 3/9 via Audio Antihero.
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Eli Enis | @eli_enis
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