1.9.09

Check up

I was really busy in August, I apologize. I only got, what, 4 blog posts up in the entire month? Pitiful. Or something like that. Anyways, having gone to Morris, MN, and stood on the lawn in the center of UMM's campus, and listened to Cloud Cult perform for an hour and a half or so, I have decided to sit here and plug them shamelessly. Which is too bad, since they aren't going to be playing another show for a bit.

Last year, Cloud Cult, which is a homegrown Minnesota rock band that has been around for about 12 years, released an album titled Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes) with the intention of releasing it, doing perhaps a small tour, and then retiring to a life of hobby farming in northern Minnesota. Or maybe that was just the lead singer, Craig Minowa. Regardless, that's not what happened, thank goodness. The album brought them heaps of critical praise and general popularity - they even had a song on a commercial spot. So they kept touring. As I finally got around to seeing them, and hearing them for the first time (which makes me sort of a terrible person, I know), in Summer 2009, I am quite pleased with this turn of events. I'm hoping they are too.

Anyways, they're a rock band in the sense that there are drums, a guitar and a bass; the full instrumentation is as follows: violin, cello, drums, electric guitar, and electric bass. The guitarist sings main vocals and also plays the keyboard and manipulates artificial noise (loops, sound bites, and such), the cellist also sometimes plays keyboard, the bassist also sometimes plays trombone and a children's xylophone, and everybody already mentioned but the drummer sings vocals. BUT there are also two full-time painters that tour with the band and paint during shows (the paintings are auctioned off for charity at the end of the show; UMM bought one for $500); one of the painters also sometimes plays the keyboard, and sings, and the other sings and sometimes plays the trumpet.

So "rock" isn't a very good description, but the point is, they're amazingly talented, and make amazing music. It sounds as if they're going on a small hiatus (one of the painters is married to Craig, the lead singer, and they're expecting in about a month), and almost everyone in the band is married, and not necessarily to each other, so families and lives beckon. So even though you may not be able to see them live anytime soon (unless you live in River Falls, Wisconsin, in which case go see them on 9/11 at the U of W there), you can check out their music and buy their 7 or 8 albums at cloudcult.com.