Well, here's a blast from my past. Kind of, anyway. If you'd just thrown this disc on and asked me where and when it was played, I would have guessed Manchester, England, 1992 without giving it much thought. And I probably would have wondered how such a good little shoegazer record had managed to elude me as I swept the genre clean several years ago. You see, big, swirly, noisy British rock was the music that finally broke my close-minded assumption that no one had made any good music after the 70s. And once I found it, I dove in deep, scooping up all the Ride albums I could find and hunting down all of the elusive Boo Radleys records and EPs I could find. If asked, I could produce a pretty massive stack of discs that fit at least vaguely in the category, from acknowledged classics like Loveless to obscurities like a 14 Iced Bears compilation.
Of course, Ides of Space's debut album wasn't recorded in 1992, nor in Manchester, England. Rather, it's just an anachronism from Sydney, Australia. And damned if I don't love it. I suppose it's my lot to like an album like this, given the special place this kind of music has in my heart. But while I love it, I have to face facts-- There Are No New Clouds breaks no new ground whatsoever and the ground it does tread is already beaten halfway to death.
"This Side of the Screen" opens the album with clean guitars and crisp drums that could have come straight off of Ride's Nowhere. Patrick Haid intones in a heavily accented tenor and gets through most of a verse before the inevitable wall of distortion blasts in from both speakers and wraps everything in a dense fuzz. "Arthur's Car" follows with a much brisker rhythm and mostly clean guitars, opting instead to allow Martin Barker's keyboards to fill in the spaces that would normally be occupied by noise. Haid's voice is doubled over the top, delivering a strong melody in a tone reminiscent of some of American indiedom's tweer elements, like Witch Hazel and Spectacle.
From there, the band blasts through eight other blissed-out nuggets, most of which would have been worthy of an NME Single of the Week column about a decade ago. At this point, though, they're simply enjoyable, and I think the quality of the music says something for the band. The way they play and write, it's hard to believe they've only been together for two years. The melodies are well developed and the playing is technically flawless, yet rough enough to sound real. The only consistently unpredictable timbre is Barker's keyboard, but the Ides vary the feels and tempos enough that the songs don't blur together.
"Random Noise Generator" ably displays the band's tightness and skill with its switch from a quiet, slow, spacy intro into a quick-paced rocker with an impressive instrumental breakdown in the middle. The band builds toward a climax but instead stops short with a brief silence before blasting back into the verse. The device is a little less effective when repeated for the outro, but they vary the approach slightly by filling the silence with a delay-drenched keyboard and cropping the buildup.
Guitarist Mark Ayoub serves up some appealing, if highly derivative, lead parts to counterbalance Haid's airy lead vocal on "I Promise Not to Notice If You Promise to Pretend." The rhythm section of brothers Anthony and David The hits particularly hard on this song, too, laying down a solid, driving foundation for the other members' more skyward aspirations.
It's followed by "Computer World," which, though unfortunately not a surprise Kraftwerk cover, offers a good look at the band's facility with slower, quieter songs. Beginning with sparse guitar strumming and a distant keyboard drone that wouldn't sound terribly out of place on an old Talk Talk or recent Hood record, it evolves into a windswept ballad that makes good use of space between instruments and notes, only opting to fill it with loud distortion near the very end.
Part of what makes this album so successful is the guiding hand of producer Wayne Connolly, who sees to it that, no matter how loud or noisy it is, no one part overwhelms any of the others in a way that it shouldn't. In addition to being well and confidently played, this album even sounds good. This record isn't really for everybody, though-- if you're not already a convert to the shoegazer aesthetic, this won't be the disc that changes your mind. But despite the fact that it doesn't really do anything that original, there's plenty of good stuff to be found here, and There Are No New Clouds, while an unintentionally accurate title, at the very least reveals a young band with scads of potential. If they came this far in two years, imagine where they'll be after two more.
