Celebrating their tenth anniversary with a brand-new album, Cloakroom are one of those rare bands who manage to operate across a range of genres, whilst making the whole so utterly cohesive and beguiling, that you never stop to consider the component parts making up the majestic music they play. The new album, Dissolution Wave is a perfect case in point – it operates in a dreamy, ethereal realm where post-rock, post-metal and shoe gaze all revolve around one another, with progressive shards spinning around the core. The results are marvellous, absorbing the listener and allowing them to drift in space, guided by the band, but free to dream along the way.
The album starts in an alternate universe where Sebadoh’s influences were more metal than punk, as Lost Meaning offers up a grinding riff set against dreamy, clean vocals. As white-hot slivers of feedback shoot through the mix, the listener is kept in place by the churning bass, even as they’re buffeted by the winds of a reverb-drenched lead part. It’s mesmerising, beautiful, and quite unlike anything else in the Relapse catalogue, all of which places the album in the realms of the essential, even if it is only the first track. The title track is no less expansive, the densely woven vocals recalling a mix of Seafood’s underrated indie excursions and Thurston Moore at this dreamiest. The soundtrack, meanwhile, seems to drift in a world of its own making, often leaving the listener agape at the echoing beauty on offer. Built around a tougher beat, A Force At Play is no less beautiful, but it has more purpose in its stride, building to an epically sludgy climax. Similarly, despite a brief moment of calm, Dottie Back Thrush juxtaposes the airiest of vocals against the most cruelly distorted of riffs. Once again harking back to the halcyon days of Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jnr’s auspicious early albums, with a pinch of Sonic Youth for good measure, it’s a gorgeous song that seeps unexpectedly into the consciousness, for all of its scattered ambience.
Opening the second half of the album on a Sabbath trip, the sludgy guitars of Fear Of Being Fixed soon to lead to some of the album’s most sublimely beautiful moments, even if the guitars continue to burn and fizz with real potency. At the other end of the spectrum, Lambspring is simply a great pop song, with a taut beat and a melody that you’ll be singing for days. With the end of the album fast approaching, the band offer the gentle, somnolent Doubts, a folk-infused number that tells a tale of lingering regret, soundtracked by Neil Young circa Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. It leaves the bruising riffola of Dissembler to see the album out on a high, the speaker-threatening volume levels of the guitars backed by some of the most energetic drum work on the album. It’s a fitting conclusion to a fantastic album, and it leaves you very much wanting more.
A hazy album that nods both to the psychedelic albums of the mid-70s and the heavy alternative records of the early 90s, Dissolution Wave is an unexpectedly beautiful record that takes the listener off on a wide-eyed journey through space, led by gossamer-fine vocals and occasionally bruising bursts of dense guitar. A lovely trip, Dissolution Wave is something of an essential listen. 9/10
