Cloud Cult

"Living, it ain't easy," howls Craig Minowa on "No One Said It Would Be Easy," the opening track from Feel Good Ghosts, the eighth release in as many years from Minnesota-based eco-indie rockers Cloud Cult. As hackneyed a line as it may seem, the band's principal songwriter comes at the sentiment honest. Back in 2002, his infant son suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. Forced to confront one of life’s ultimate tragedies, Minowa would reconcile the pain he felt with the hopeful, wide-eyed music he created in Cloud Cult. The result was some of the finest pop music of the past decade—2005's Advice from the Happy Hippopotomus, and last year's The Meaning of 8 were both sprawling epics about loss, discovery, salvation through perseverance and steadfast optimism.

Feel Good Ghosts, the latest from Minowa and company, follows the same blueprint, offering up colorful indie pop with the sort of adorable lyrical nuances, eclectic instrumentation, and soaring, sun-drenched aesthetic we've come to expect from the Cult. The courageous "The Will of a Volcano" morphs from a stuttering hurdy gurdy bounce into a squall of guitars and drums, all supported by a mantra-like chorus of the song title. Meanwhile, "It's What You Need" gets by on a lone minute of candy-pop perfection, and "May Your Heart Stay Strong" is a gradual builder about Minowa's favorite subject: perseverance. Indeed, this is an album of unadulterated uplift. "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired/ I will laugh my way through the hurricanes and fire / That's why you don't wanna bring me down," Minowa sings on "Hurricane and Fire Survival Guide." No, living certainly isn't easy, but emerging from one of the darkest trials of life, Minowa's songs makes it sound effortless.

–Robbie Mackey
04.25.08

It's hard not to root for Cloud Cult. A Minneapolis-based collective whose social conscience is as important as their music, the bandmembers have made a strong name for themselves in green circles for putting their money where their mouth is on the topic: not only do they tour in a biodiesel van and use recycled and sustainable materials in their CD packaging, the group's profits are donated to charity. This includes the proceeds from the work of the band's two non-musicians, painters Connie Minowa and Scott West: during each Cloud Cult performance, they paint original works on-stage as the band plays, which are then auctioned off from the stage at the end of the show. Furthermore, it seems nearly impossible not to be moved by the fact that since the 2002 death of Kaidin Minowa, Connie and singer/songwriter Craig Minowa's young son, the majority of the band's songs have dealt, sometimes explicitly but more often obliquely, with that loss. But while doing press for the band's fifth album in five years, Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes), Craig Minowa announced that this was quite possibly the last Cloud Cult record, or at least the last before a long break. Releasing an album a year -- especially while undergoing the processes of grief -- is exhausting for even the most prolific bands, and unfortunately, Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes) shows the strain. Following the band's career high point, 2005's Advice from the Happy Hippopotamus, and 2007's more restrained The Meaning of 8, this has the undeniable feel of a songwriter and a band who have started running out of ideas. To cite the group's most obvious musical touchstone, the Flaming Lips, this is their Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the album where they recycle the sounds and themes of the albums just previous with considerably less of the imagination and innovation they had previously shown. Even the most devoted Cloud Cult fans will note that while there are undeniable charms to songs like "No One Said It Would Be Easy" (which opens the album with a minute-long fugue for acoustic and electric keyboards that features some outstanding, Pink Floyd-like stereo panning that must be heard on good headphones to truly appreciate) and the Arcade Fire-style urgency of "May Your Hearts Stay Strong," the high points are fewer and farther between this time out than they were before. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide