cLOUDDEAD's debut was an unassuming record, if you overlook how many people it confused or annoyed. It was the breakthrough success for the three artists who spearheaded it, but it built on a series of low-budget and bedroom projects-- like rappers Why? and Doseone's Greenthink project, Dose's murmuring Slowdeath, or producer and DJ Odd Nosdam's Plan 9: Meat Your Hypnotist-- where obtuse verses spilled out like ripped-up paper scraps over hazy, droning vinyl, overheard conversations or snippets from TV, on CDs that were fragmented into at least forty tracks apiece.
The cLOUDDEAD project extended those methods; sharp humor and surreal images leavened the album's odd shapelessness, and the band even managed to eke out a few cogent concert pieces for their tour. But the way they stitched the record together was even more interesting: The songs run together at the drop of an attention span, and the band combined them as intuitively as a found sound artist creating order out of tossed-off materials. It had an unfinished feel fed by the two years that they worked on it, at dorms and parents' houses, and even through their relocation from Cincinnati to the Bay Area. It was an album about a process, not an outcome.
The cLOUDDEAD record hit, as much as records like that ever do, and the Anticon collective-- of which Why?, Doseone and Odd Nosdam are founding members-- made waves beyond the underground hip-hop community with which it feuded. (And to be clear once again, the group never claimed this project was "hip-hop," although the controversy from purists has done nothing but make people think harder about their work.) So as they finally release their follow-up, Ten, we know more about the artists, and they've grown more into their styles.
You can identify the two frontmen at the start of "Pop Song": Why?'s the one gently singing, "Elvis, what happened?" while Dose chants, "The wooden man and his splintering self." Why?'s excellent Oaklandazulasylum revealed a rap-based artist who wants to write songs and strum a guitar, making him one of very few artists trying to cross over from hip-hop to indie rock. Doseone has worked with producer Jel under the name Themselves, and he also came into his own as a performer on his album with Circle, where partner Boom Bip's production challenged the sometimes self-absorbed intricacies of his lyrics.
Completing the trio is Odd Nosdam, who produced half the tracks (Why? handled the rest) and played electronic drums. Nosdam demonstrates his deft taste in ambient vinyl and oompah beats, with a couple kitschy samples mixed in; on his tracks, the most static sounds can buzz and excite-- like the smoggy "Rifle Eyes", where the crackling noise seems to come from something more sinister than just old vinyl.
Ten is half as long as the band's debut and much more focused; each performer shows improved range and sharper talents. And yet, it's still a mixed bag. If several of the songs are fantastic, the album is more stilted and less intriguing. Take the lyrics, which are so refined that they sometimes become too arch to flow, like they've been pinned down in a display case. The precise and verb-free imagery works on "Dead Dogs Two" or "Rifle Eyes"-- for example, Why? declaiming, "A single long-stemmed rose resting between two mounted antlers"-- but it gets distracting on other songs, especially for Doseone, who chops his inimitable flow into pieces; "The Velvet Ant" runs more like a set of mantras than a song. cLOUDDEAD have also never been strong with lyrics that have literal meaning, and Ten's themes about the gun industry or the music business lose power when they become too clear: take the list of predictable victims of gun violence on "Son of a Gun". (Though any lyric that puts Malcolm X and Mahatma Gandhi and Tupac and Biggie in the same list has a certain sly appeal.) By contrast, the gory, context-free imagery of "Dead Dogs Two" is sublime.
The production on Ten is strong, although you can tell that cLOUDDEAD is more a special project than a working band when the heavier tracks rub almost disconcertingly against jerky and whimsical ones. "The Teen Keen Skip" starts with a sample of that new cliché, a children's record, but it gets better from there: the young boy in the sample is cut off at a "Whu-- " that's repeated in a loop. (They also throw in a solo on power drill.) The moodier half is also effective, and if the instrumental "3 Twenty" comes off too blank-faced, "Rifle Eyes" is deeply ominous, sharpening the rapid-fire lyrics even as it swells and moans like a slow-motion sideswiping.
But it's telling that where cLOUDDEAD's debut worked like a collage, the strongest moments on Ten involve a sustain: sustained organ tones, long throbbing noises, stretches where the words trail off. The best moments are the surest, when the three performers come into perfect alignment, like on "Dead Dogs Two", where Why? and Dose float over the whomping beats and swap the mike to the point of alternating by the word. The record even ends with a long, electric drone, as if their ideas have crunched together and the differences in their styles have dissolved. But it also paves over the free flow of ideas that made their last work so absorbing, and so experimental. Unquestionably, cLOUDDEAD have arrived. But next time, we might want to spend more time watching them get there.
