AEM009 Color of Clouds

As a musi­cian and music lover, I’m always on the look­out for new bands. Over the years I’ve found music in a lot of inter­est­ing places, but I’ll always remem­ber the way I dis­cov­ered Color of Clouds. We’d all like to be famous. A few months ago, I plugged my name, Nate Green­berg, into Google to see how many hits popped up. Sadly, I did not top the list, nor was I even the most famous Nathan Green­berg in the music world. Instead I stum­bled across a music pro­ducer named Nathan Green­berg from Brook­lyn and his band, Color of Clouds. And they were good. Flash for­ward to Octo­ber–Ben Heller, a friend and Ampeater Review co-conspirator, tells me that he met Color of Clouds dur­ing a record­ing ses­sion at Seri­ous Busi­ness Records and that they were inter­ested in an Ampeater write up. It seemed so serendip­i­tous that I jumped at the chance to write the review.

Color of Clouds is an electro-acoustic trio fea­tur­ing mem­bers from the elec­tronic rock out­fit Moon­raker. Singer Kelli Scarr, who appears on sev­eral tracks of Moby’s lat­est album Wait for Me, resumed col­lab­o­rat­ing with songwriter/producer Dan Chen in late 2008. Soon their col­lab­o­ra­tions became the impe­tus for a new band and they recruited pro­duc­tion mas­ter Green­berg to fill out the lineup. The result­ing sound is a mix­ture of indie-folk/pop, tinged with elec­tron­ics, which has been described as “what it would sound like if Feist were to sing with the Flam­ing Lips”. Sim­ple elec­tron­ics accent the flow­ing, yet restrained instru­men­tal parts, pro­vid­ing the per­fect back­ground to Scarr’s sul­try vocals. Chen also sings on sev­eral songs, and the sub­tle blend of their two voices some­times sounds as if only one vocal­ist were in the room.

A-side “Brother” is a smooth and poignant jam. When I lis­ten to it I feel like I’m gaz­ing out at the world through a rain­drop glazed win­dow. Every­thing is soft and a lit­tle blurry. A mean­der­ing cello, waver­ing gui­tar, sub­dued piano, and gen­tly brushed drums melt into a lush back­ground. Scarr’s voice takes the spot­light and her lyrics shine over the mix. Chen notes, “Kelli brought it in as a pretty com­plete sketch on her acoustic, and it didn’t take much for us to come up with the extra sec­tions needed to fin­ish it. I love this track because production-wise we left a great deal of it untouched; we got great per­for­mances from Yair Evnine on gui­tar, and Dan Mintzer on drums, and of course, an amaz­ing vocal right off the bat from Kelli. The song stands on its own so well that we really didn’t feel the need to add any bells & whis­tles, just a touch of delay and such here and there… it offers a glimpse into where most of our songs come from – heart­felt lyrics and a bunch of musi­cians qui­etly play­ing along.” I think that’s a fairly accu­rate descrip­tion. Scarr’s lyrics are stun­ningly sim­ple, but dead on.

All I wanna do is tell you one more time
Brother, brother
But there’s noth­ing I can do when the feel­ing isn’t right
Move on brother, move on brother

But four bit­ter­sweet chords con­tinue through­out most of the record­ing, cre­at­ing a sense of cycli­cal momen­tum which com­pli­cates Scarr’s pleas to move on. The song builds slightly but never really goes any­where. And yet it seems strangely com­plete. The end­ing dis­solves with­out ever really resolv­ing, like that last rain­drop trick­ling down the window.

The B-side is a cover of Lou Reed’s 1972 hit “Satel­lite of Love”. I’m usu­ally skep­ti­cal of cov­ers, but every now and then I find a cover that eclipses the orig­i­nal. This is one of those cov­ers, and that’s quite a claim, since I love Reed’s ver­sion. But Color of Clouds strips the song down to its bare bones, leav­ing a sense of inti­macy not present in the orig­i­nal. Chen recalls, “[the song] has been a favorite of mine since high school, and dur­ing a week of record­ing ses­sions with Color of Clouds, it popped up ran­domly on my iPod, and I imme­di­ately knew that we had to cover it.” It’s a nat­ural enough choice; the song is a per­fect fit for Scarr’s voice. But with her singing, the song takes on a new life, approach­ing some­thing that Mr. Reed’s voice never could: cute. While the lyrics tell a story of a jeal­ous love, the music is full of hope. The outro boasts one of the most uplift­ing chord pro­gres­sions in any song out there, and Color of Clouds rolls with it. The inti­mate acoustic sing-along, clap-your-hands vibe accen­tu­ates the joy embod­ied in those three chords. On that note, their deci­sion to cut the bridge, which returns to jeal­ousy and tinges the orig­i­nal outro with a sense of bit­ter­ness, seems wholly appropriate.

Color of Clouds’s debut, The Look EP, was released in May 2009, and they plan to fol­low up with a full-length album in early 2010. Stay tuned. I expect it won’t be long before my poor name is bru­tally overshadowed.

Nate Green­berg

Side A — Brother Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Side B — Satel­lite of Love Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[[[Down­load the 7-inch]]]