{grate 4}
With a cellist, violinist and two visual artists, Cloud Cult
— a Minnesota-based sextet that laces electronica and folk into its mellow
indie vocabulary — remains stubbornly and beautifully independent. They’ve
rejected record-exec offers in favor of releasing albums through band-leader
Craig Minowa’s own not-for-profit, environmentally friendly label on
100-percent post-consumer recycled materials. The group’s newest endeavor, Feel
Good Ghosts, is carefully simple, delicately distilling audible and thematic
complexities into a jubilant elixir of human experience that seems able to
transform even the most tenacious sticklers into barefooted kids playing in
dewy grass.
On album starter, “No One Said It Would Be Easy,” twinkling
music-box melodies, computerized robot beats and the cult’s cooing (which
quickly shifts to urgent, echoing whispers on a throbbing track two, “Everybody
Here is a Cloud”) coalesce. Later, the same peaceful, childlike vocals meet a
triumphantly uplifting orchestral soundscape taking whimsical flight on
“Journey of the Featherless.” And while ditties like these make for carefree
lemonade sipping, the band’s curious innocence melts away on songs like “The
Ghost Inside Our House,” a thoughtful reflection on loss and growing old.
Still, tracks like “Story of the Grandson of Jesus” pick up again, remaining
sweetly glass-is-half-full (“Do unto yourself as you do unto your neighbor/
It’s not an eye for an eye it’s a favor for a favor”).
Ghosts isn’t flawless — too-easy tracks “May Your Hearts
Stay Strong” and “The Will of a Volcano” dance uncomfortably near to fizzling
flavor-of-the-week pop moments — but it is refreshingly honest, rejoicing in
the spirit of life. So turn up the volume, take off your shoes and let loose.
It is springtime, after all.