I’ve bored anyone who would listen – and plenty who didn’t want to – with the assertion that the best songs could be recorded on a dictaphone and they’d still sound good. A good song is all that matters. Dithering over sound quality is simply papering over important cracks.
This is one of the reasons why bands at the very beginning of their life cycles are so alluring – the songs you hear are unsullied with any concerns other than getting the songs recorded as quickly as possible, before another new one nudges the last one out of the artist’s brain.
Cloud Nothings // Hey Cool Kid
With all this in mind, after a few listens, it transpired that Cloud Nothings are the perfect ANBAD band. Cloud Nothings began as one man – Dylan Baldi – who recorded a handful of songs in his basement on a cheap microphone. For once I believe the PR blurb.
Hey Cool Kid, and songs of this ilk, can only have been recorded in this way, or at least with these intentions. Scrappy, murky and fuzzy it may be – but the nugget of gold glistens brightly through it all. ‘Catchy’ doesn’t begin to describe it: there’s no warning for what’s to come. It will weedle into your mind and perform loop-the-loops all day long.
Listening to these songs is a quick teleportation into the mind of the musician at the moment of creation. It’s a lovely trip, and a reminder that the important thing is the song – it’s always the song.