Cloud Archive are an ambient post-rock band, leaning more towards an aggressive alt-rock sound than the heavily textured ethereal indulgence that most of their peers dwell in. Whether this is good or not is up to you, I happen to like that this is a band taking the approach of Mogwai or Explosions in the Sky, yet their influences are probably closer to Sublime or Nirvana.
The last time I saw them was at the Bike Church in Santa Cruz, and they really rocked the place, but this show was slightly more subdued. The songs hung on ambient interludes, building ambience before bursting forth in glorious distortion.
Peter Broderick
I'll be honest, when Peter was setting up I was preparing to sit at the bar till Efterklang played. I'm not a big fan of singer songwriters, especially not those who play solo with keys or guitars. His first song started simple, just guitar and voice; he made it through a verse or two before the scene changed. He hastily stomped on a looping pedal, dropped the guitar, and started pacing the stage, adding loop after loop of lush violin.
Each song demonstrated immense creativity with the looper, I definitely got a lot of ideas that I want to steal from him. Two things really stuck out:
1. He started one song by saying, "Thanks, this is a song my grandfather used to sing to me", he plays a short little tune, hits the looper, and it starts over again "Thanks, this is a song...". But that loop captured the energy and ambience of the audience, who had just clapped for the previous song and were eagerly awaiting the next. Maybe I'm not explaining it well enough, but somehow the dude captured the feeling of ending one song and starting another live, and incorporated it into a beautiful tune.
2. Looping his I LUV SF OMG spiel over itself over and over again. I burst out laughing.
Efterklang
I missed these guys last time they came through town, and definitely had to catch them this time around. The sound was absolutely gorgeous, all the songs from their albums were either re-created perfectly or improved on. I wasn't sure how they'd handle the glitchy beats of their earlier releases, but a dedicated Laptop-ist was rocking the mixer with a level of expression I rarely see among traditional musicians. With the amount of knob twisting I saw him do I doubt any of the loops ever repeated once without some filter being spun, some frequency range cut out.
They played 4 or 5 new songs, which were all very good, although they sound far less like big-band Victorian glitch pop and more like American rock music.
Oh and they played Caravan which was all I cared about. Some ass kept yelling for Polygyne during every song break. But Casper from Efterklang managed to skillfully deflect or ignore him every time.
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