To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Cloud Nothings' seminal album, Attack on Memory, the band has announced a very special limited edition vinyl pressing. Pressed on sky blue vinyl and housed in a foil jacket with all new colorized artwork, the anniversary edition includes two bonus flexi 7"s featuring two never-before-released tracks, "You Will Turn" and "Jambalaya", lifted from the original studio sessions at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio.
Cleveland’s Dylan Baldi began writing and recording lo-fi power-pop songs in his parents’ basement in 2009, dubbing the project Cloud Nothings. His music quickly started making the Internet rounds, and fans and critics alike took note of his pithy songcraft, infectiously catchy melodies, and youthful enthusiasm. Baldi soon released a string of 7”s, a split cassette, and an EP before putting out Turning On—a compilation spanning about a year’s worth of work—on Carpark in 2010. January 2011 saw the release of Cloud Nothings’ self- titled debut LP, which, put next to Turning On, found Baldi cleaning up his lo-fi aesthetic, pairing his tales of affinitive confusion with a more pristine aural clarity.
Following the release of Cloud Nothings, Baldi toured widely and invested significant time and energy into his live show, which heavily shaped Attack on Memory. After playing the same sets nightly for months on end, Baldi saw the rigidity of his early work, and wanted to create arrangements that would allow for more improvisation and variability when played on the road. To accomplish this desired malleability, the entire band decamped to Chicago—where the album was recorded with Steve Albini—and all lent a hand in the songwriting process. The product of these sessions is a record boasting features that, even at a glance, mark a sea change in the band’s sound: higher fidelity, a track clocking in at almost nine minutes, an instrumental, and an overall more plaintive air. The songs move along fluidly, and Baldi sounds assured as he brings his vocals up in the mix, allowing himself to hold out long notes and put some grain into his voice. Minor key melodies abound, drums emphatically contribute much more than mere timekeeping, and the guitar work is much more adventurous than that of previous releases.
For all of early Cloud Nothings’ fun and fervor, Baldi admits that it never sounded like most of the music he listens to. With Attack on Memory, he wanted to remedy this anomaly, and in setting out to do so, Baldi and co. created an album that showed vast growth for a very young band. Attack on Memory by Cloud Nothings is an influential album that triggered a whole new era for the band and garnered widespread praise from music tastemakers like Pitchfork, Stereogum, Rolling Stone, and more. Named "Best New Music" by Pitchfork and attracting a score of 8.6, the album also contained two “Best New Tracks” (“No Future/No Past”, “Stay Useless”) and subsequently made #19 on Pitchfork’s Album of the Year list for 2012. Spin Magazine gave the album a stellar 9/10 rating, while Rolling Stone named Cloud Nothings as a "Band to Watch" and included Attack on Memory at #21 on their Top 50 Albums of 2012 list (it also placed #6 on Stereogum’s Top 50 Albums of 2012 list). Attack on Memory reached #2 on the CMJ Radio Charts and peaked at #3 on US Top Heatseekers, #21 on US Independent Albums, #25 on the US Alternative Albums, #37 on US Rock Albums chart, and #121 on the US Billboard 200 charts. Cloud Nothings subsequently toured North America, Europe, Israel, Australia, appearing at festivals like Coachella, Laneway Festival and Fuji Rock Festival, and made their debut television appearance on the Jimmy Fallon Show (performing the track “Stay Useless”). To this day, Attack on Memory has remained an iconic piece of indie rock history, placing high on lists such as Brooklyn Vegan's best 100 albums of the decade.
