Cloud Control aren’t the band you’d expect to be super secretive about a new song, let alone an upcoming record, but when it comes to their anticipated sophomore LP – the follow up to the AMP Award winning Bliss Release – mum is definitely the word from both band and management. Which makes it especially difficult to conduct an interview about the album, which they’ll be premiering at VIVID Festival later this year.
But you can’t blame a guy for trying, so I took a chance and talked with the band’s frontman Alister Wright on what he called a “nice classic dreary London day” to try and get something out of him about the new record. First, we spoke about things we did know about the new record: the songs we heard when they supported Weezer back in January, which Al admitted were the only shows they’ve performed this year.
“Playing with Weezer was great. It was really cool to play with a band we all really respected and it was really great to get to play some new songs too… I think people really got into it straight up. You never know when you’re trying out new stuff. Sometimes people can’t really enjoy themselves if they don’t know the songs already or something like that. Yeah, it felt pretty cool.”
So we know the songs they’ve performed went down well, but we don’t know the names, and we don’t even know if they’ll play the same songs at VIVID! Al admitted nothing was finalised for the set: “We’ll be playing… I mean this is so standard… but we’ll be playing a bunch of our old songs and a bunch of our new songs… I think they’ll be special shows, in the Opera House, which is a different kind of thing to what we usually do, so I guess it will feel pretty intimate… it’s seated, so it’ll be a little more chilled out – do you reckon people will stand?”
To this question, I reminded him that he’s the frontman and should be able to get the crowd to stand if he wants to. “Jeremy was saying that I’d need to do that, but then when I was sitting down and watching Weezer, and everyone stood up, I wanted everyone to sit back down because I wanted to chill out and watch the show! But I guess it was pretty cool when we all stood up and went nuts. And eventually we got up and ran to the front and sang along to every song.” So would he enjoy it if he saw a couple of eager fans running up to the front of the Joan Sutherland Theatre to do the same? He admitted, “yeah, that would really make my day.”
And what of the parents? They must be pretty proud that you’re getting to play such a prestigious venue. “I think my parents are really excited to come see us play. It’s a parent friendly kind of venue. My parents have followed us around everywhere though. They’ve come to every venue in Sydney and even come down to Melbourne a couple of times.”
OK… so now was my time to mention the album. All I knew was that they were working with producer Barney Barnicott on the record… So Al, what can you tell us? “Have you checked out the Tumblr we’ve been doing? Ulrich has been cutting up all these videos of us making the record. They’re pretty fun.”
We’ve been recording things in a cave which is cool. But other than that I’m not sure what to say. I got told not to tell you any track names, or the album title, which makes it hard… I can tell you that I feel like we’ve gone a lot closer to the demos for this album… a lot of sketchier stuff… things we did on our laptops over the last 18 months have found its way onto the album. Beats, electronic elements, that kind of thing.”
“I played some songs to my girlfriend the other night and I was thinking ‘oh my god this is so crazy, people are going to flip out because this doesn’t sound anything like Cloud Control’ and she just said ‘you know what, this still just sounds like Cloud Control’. So I feel like it’s really different, but I think people will still know that it’s us.”
And that’s just about all I got… I guess if you want to know more about the album you’ll have to experience it for yourself! The band will be premiering tracks from the record as part of VIVID Live at the Sydney Opera House on 31st May.
For more details on the show head here: http://www.vividsydney.com/events/cloud-control-aus/?gclid=CN7o1-_J6LYCFYhfpQodhjQAtA
The band will also be a part of the Splendour in the Grass festival in July.
