(I will post my photos from the show at a future date).
Cloud Cult is a band from Minneapolis, MN., that I was turned on to a couple of years ago by my friend Trevor of the band HIJK. The album they were touring in support of, Advice For The Happy Hippopotamus, was genius and ended up one of my favorite albums of the year.
Then I found out how eco-friendly they are -- they buy carbon credits to make up for the carbon footprint they leave by going on tour!
They've released a couple of albums since Happy Hippo, and while neither was as good, they are both still well worthwhile. That said, each contains clunkers.
What kills me about bands is not when they include clunkers on their albums (I mean, seriously, without clunkers the Rolling Stones would have released, what, 4 albums?), but when they play those clunkers live. Cloud Cult has seven albums worth of material to choose from, but it seems like they often feel the need to play newer stuff that's not necessarily ever going to be fan favorites.
It's not just me, either -- there were a couple of times at their show at Bottom of the Hill last night where I thought, "This one? Really? They're playing this one?!?" when I could think of a dozen other songs that would be crowd-pleasers. I looked around and saw people bored and looking around, biding their time for the next song. And like me, these were definitely Cloud Cult fans -- it wasn't like people were leaving before the band was done even though it was a school night.
That said, the majority of the set was top notch, the performance excellent, and the crowd was totally into them.
