It might not be obvious from the dense, towering compositions of his recent discography, but Dylan Baldi is something of an ascetic. The Cloud Nothings frontman’s updates during lockdown suggested he was shopping around an ambient emo record and embracing the hypnotic drone of modular synths. The only music he and Cloud Nothings drummer Jayson Gerycz released together in the past three months was a minimal “free-form jazz” improvisation that featured only a saxophone and drums. But an avant-garde side project is one thing; aiming to reproduce Cloud Nothings’ searing riffs and gnarled screams in solitude is more daunting. That might explain the relatively low-key rollout of their new record, The Black Hole Understands, recorded remotely in quarantine and primarily featuring Baldi and Gercyz. Rather than attempt to replicate the harsher sound they’ve developed since 2012’s Attack on Memory, they spit-shine limited resources until they gleam like a long-lost Creation Records release. Despite being recorded in an era of unthinkable instability, it is the most assuredly melodic Cloud Nothings has sounded in years.
Perhaps owing to the limits of his home studio setup, which by his telling consists only of GarageBand, Baldi eschews the abrasive shouts and syncopated, MacKaye-indebted barking that were his go-to on 2018’s Last Building Burning. Instead, he delicately traverses vocal triplets, overdubs bright counter-harmonies, and leaps into ELO-worthy falsettos with ease. The softer approach befits the band’s humbler sound. On “An Average World,” Baldi ends a pre-chorus bridge by resolving the harmonies introduced earlier in the verse, his voice ticking up to match his guitar. In another universe, it’s easy to imagine Cloud Nothings building momentum with layered, angular chords, Baldi capping off each line with an increasingly unhinged shout. But here they choose harmony instead of dissonance, creating tension not by pushing the limits of studio mics and faders, but through the sense of anxiety that, because everything is recorded so closely and with such light processing, any slight vocal crack could throw the song off course.
The Black Hole Understands is in many ways a revisitation of the band’s earliest days, when Cloud Nothings was Baldi recording alone in his parents’ Ohio basement. These songs share a similar pop sensibility and self-contained structure as his early recordings, bolstered by a decade’s worth of experience and Gerycz’s note-perfect percussion. There’s the simmering, quiet-loud dynamic of “The Sound of Everyone,” which arrives at a restrained crescendo as Baldi reassuringly sings “life won’t always be this way” over crisp drum fills and low bass. “A Silent Reaction” borrows the fuzzed-out sincerity of Teenage Fanclub, clean chords building to a wistful refrain delivered in Baldi’s surprisingly strong higher register. The album betrays a deep nostalgia for power pop, whether on the twinkling reverb of “Memory of Regret” or the cooing backing vocals that accent “The Mess Is Permanent.”
Despite similarly modest origins, The Black Hole Understands is more patient than the blown-out revelry of Cloud Nothings’ early bedroom recordings. Rather than lean into the gimmick of a “bedroom” record, they disguise their relatively amateur equipment behind clean melodies and reliable song structures. Thanks in large part to Gerycz’s obsessive home mixing, otherwise novel elements of the recording process—Baldi relied solely on the built-in guitar amps on GarageBand, for example—are hardly recognizable. The limits of composing songs via email manifest most clearly on the wordless “Tall Gray Structure,” where dense and stormy riffs give way to a prolonged, mostly straightforward jam session. It’s serviceable if formulaic, fading into the background like a television score. But for the most part, Black Hole stands defiantly against the decade Cloud Nothings spent working with an impressive roster of producers, honing their sound in such hallowed spaces as Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio. Absent pushback from a watchful producer, the band’s intuitive knack for melody shines through.
What could otherwise be a throwaway experiment is bolstered further by the strength of Baldi’s songwriting. While certain lines land with a wink—“This ain’t the ending I had wanted,” he sings on “Story That I Live”—his cheerily-delivered defeatism is comforting in its timelessness. “What is the purpose of anything more?” he asks with a slight shrug on “An Average World,” a question that feels directed towards quarter-life crises in general, more than the one unfolding at this particular moment. Hearing Baldi sing about comfortingly quotidian issues—emotional disconnection or frustration with life—is a source of welcome familiarity. “Ordinary people/Living out their lives,” he sings brightly on “Right on the Edge.” Backed by gleaming harmonies, Cloud Nothings make the dulled ennui of everyday life sound like an escapist fantasy.
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