Cloud Cult / Sin-é / June 10, 2005

I had never cried at a show before. But I was having one of those days when everything happens at once and you’re forced to make Big Life-Changing Decisions, so when Cloud Cult started playing a particularly delicate song, the floodgates opened. I must have looked like a total freak, this girl weeping quietly in the corner all by herself.

Maybe I was in such an unbalanced state that the music wouldn’t have mattered, like I could have been at the LCD Soundsystem show that same night and I would have started bawling during “Tribulations” or something. Cloud Cult’s set was quite joyful—there were cut-and-paste video projections and a guy painting a picture on a canvas on the stage. Everybody was all smiles, and Cult leader Craig Minowa kept talking about how excited he was to be in New York City for the first time. The band—Minowa, a drummer, a bassist, a cellist and a violinist—played their busy indie pop/hyper-prog briskly and messily. But I couldn’t keep the bad vibes away, especially when considering Minowa’s tragic backstory (you can read about it in this review I wrote of Cloud Cult’s latest album).

I really hope this band gets big. Or does an 8.3 on Pitchfork not mean anything anymore?