Cloud Nothings and LVL UP played Paradise Rock Club – 1/31
Recent Sub Pop signees LVL UP and noisy Carpark-ers Cloud Nothings packed the Paradise last Tuesday night for a great double bill to close out the month.
Cloud Nothings’ Life Without Sound, the band’s fourth-ish full length, dropped just days before this show, but you wouldn’t know it based on the vibe of the room. Near-capacity and enthusiastic to scream along, this was clearly a crowd that knew the old songs by heart and had done a pretty damn good job of learning the new ones in a very short span of time.
Life Without Sound is a shift for the band, a followup to a pair of widely beloved records that pares back some of the angsty urgency and melodic appeal that made them so. I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but can confirm that, like most all Cloud Nothings songs, these ones work live.
Singer/songwriter/guitarist Dylan Baldi led the show in largely anti-showman fashion, standing to the far end of the stage rather than the dead-center position most frontmen would occupy. Joining him was the rhythm section of drummer Jayson Gerycz and bassist TJ Duke that’s been a constant of the band since 2010, along with a recently added second guitarist. Gerycz remains a fierce and fiery percussionist who serves as the band’s secret weapon, and with him both literally and figuratively at the center of the action, they sounded great.
Along with the new songs, we got a healthy dose of favorites from Attack on Memory and Here and Nowhere Else, including the requisite extended burnout of “Wasted Days.” And the crowd raged for all of it. This was Cloud Nothings’ biggest headlining Boston gig to date, and by all indications a successful one.
But part of the draw, one has to guess, was openers LVL UP. They command something of a cult following, and their Sub Pop signing has naturally helped to raise their profile. Though they are New York-based, the quartet possess a spiritual link to the off-kilter sounds of Boston and Western Mass. Their songs are catchy, fuzzy and unconventional, with a sort of downcast and disheveled charm reminiscent of the Ovlovs and Krills of the world.
That charm translates nicely to the stage; they’re low-key, but hardly boring. A number of cuts from last year’s excellent Return to Love and a few earlier tunes comprised the setlist, though a number of shouted requests for more could be heard between songs. It’s not every opening band that brings out its own diehards.
Shooting Notes:
I’m planning to start doing a short section at the end of reviews where I throw in some photo observations for anyone who finds this sort of thing as interesting as I do.
I guessed correctly that Dylan would be off to the far right of the stage, and purposefully picked that side since getting a center-stage spot at the Paradise is basically impossible if you don’t have a lot of time to kill before the show. That vantage point certainly helped my Cloud Nothings shots, but made LVL UP more difficult, particularly with how they arrange themselves on stage. Alas.
I had a new 24-70mm lens to test out at this show, which performed admirably and was preferable to switching primes, especially while getting thrown around by a lively Cloud Nothings crowd.
We got pretty standard Paradise dimness for LVL UP, though the light for the night’s headliners was actually quite dramatic. Lots of strong backlighting and fog, which I’ll take over a lifeless wash of orange and red any day.
