Cloud Nothings aren’t fairly well-known sufficient to be a correct “legacy band,” a time period usually related to nostalgia acts providing older followers an opportunity to relive their youth. Moderately, they’re a working band — the type of dependable group who launch an album after which go on tour, after which do all of it once more a pair years later, probably reaching all the identical followers they did the final time. They have an inclination to deal with it like a job, in that respectable method of fellows who’ve discovered their vocation and are prepared to place within the work.
This dedication to the craft is mirrored of their eighth album, Ultimate Summer time. “I should be glad / With what I’ve obtained for me,” bandleader Dylan Baldi sings on the spiky title observe. “I by no means run for anybody else / It is only a factor I do for myself” goes the faculty rock jogging anthem “Operating Via the Campus.” That is comfy, acquainted music, its confidently contented sentiments mirrored in preparations that channel Cloud Nothings’ regular grungy pop-punk however with out the breakneck depth or pained snarls of a few of their most ferocious previous work.
For the primary minute of Ultimate Summer time, it looks like this could be an enormous departure from the group. The title observe, which was launched as a single final 12 months, right here has an prolonged intro of synth atmosphere, giving solution to a fiery rager that provides squawking sax to the band’s regular punk palate.
However after that opening fake-out, Ultimate Summer time sounds just about like what longtime followers will anticipate from the combo. It may need been good to listen to extra of the adventurousness heard on the title observe. However even when Ultimate Summer time in all probability will not trigger a sufficiently big stir to get an anniversary reissue a decade from now, like 2012’s Assault on Reminiscence lately did, it is yet one more stable rock report from a dependable group who’re excellent at this type of factor.