By: Zosia Blue
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Cloud Cult publicity photo by Joe Cunningham
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Monday evening found Kid Dakota and the kaleidoscope-genred Cloud Cult at the University of Minnesota’s Coffman Theater, a small, breezy auditorium on the top floor of the Coffman Union. The subdued, though not dull crowd, immediately clapped and whistled when Darren Jackson -- in his usual dark suit with butter-yellow guitar -- and drummer Ian Prince (Story of the Sea) began playing.
If you’ve been to a Kid Dakota show, you know it goes like this, even outside the band’s normal rock club realm: the pair looks innocent enough, and then they start. Prince, in a primal, hair-swinging rage, smashes the drums so hard the set nearly topples off the stage, and Jackson, with his choir-boy tenor, sings beautiful epic melodies over the animalistic percussion, all the while inserting incredibly loud and dangerous guitar solos. The duo manages to sound like a full-on band, with energy alone.
One of the greatest examples of this was the third song of the night, “Winterkill,” a half-ballad/half-rock song that compares the white-out numbness of a snow storm to a nervous break-down, featuring crazy full-armed bust-your-ass drumming coupled with a sweet melody. The next moment, Jackson broke into “Crossin’ Fingers” from the So Pretty EP, a poppy, sexy fuck-you tune about catching a cheating lover. When the first chords of “10,000 Lakes,” a song played often on the Current, were strummed, the crowd hollered excitedly. Even in such a strange venue – I mean, the house lights remained on during the whole set, and everyone was sitting down – it still managed to be a show where drummer Prince broke a stick every three songs. (I imagine this is common for him, if evidenced by the cup holder of a dozen sticks with which he began the night.) The band managed to fill the room with sweaty rock-club energy while making the effort look like cake.
Kid Dakota was a tough act to follow, but Cloud Cult nailed it. They took the stage with the band, three live-action painters and a video collage showing behind them. What makes Cloud Cult so interesting is their almost confusing dualities – lead singer Craig Minowa was dressed like your average college kid at an outdoor festival, in rolled up cargo pants and bare feet. The rest of the band followed suit, and so the expectation was something like a jam band, something psychedelic, but sweet. This was half-true: 50% of the time their sound was edgy beach music, the type of sound to which the hero in the movie triumphs. The other 50% was dramatic, synthy and experimental, a sound not unlike their friends, A Whisper in the Noise.
I’m without song titles here, so bear with me, but one of the later songs in the set underlined this idea. It was an acoustic hoedown, a bright, fun song for a barn party, if you weren’t listening to the lyrics (which lamented a lost child.) The chorus was a lick of “You Were My Sunshine,” which gave the whole thing an eerie sadness juxtaposed against the cheery melodies. Cellist Sarah Young added the darker tone to most of the songs, including a drum-heavy song that began with a lyric about a body of a buffalo, and turned into, as mentioned before, beach-type music for the brokenhearted. The show was texture after texture; genre after genre; a rainbow of details and ideas interwoven. Two of the painters illustrated this idea best: the man on the left painted an angry red abstract portrait of a screaming face. The woman on the right painted a calm, windy resort, where clothes hung on the line and the ocean sparkled. Cloud Cult’s set was a feast for every sense; a joy, really.
In the lobby on the way out, Darren Jackson was running his own merch table and Cloud Cult’s paintings were hung on every wall. It was a different show, but an intimate one, the type where even the shyest audience member felt comfortable enough to approach the performers.
Location Info:
The Whole
Artist Info: Cloud Cult, Kid Dakota
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