Cloud Boat
Book of Hours
Reviewed by Stephen Krock
After spending an evening along the haunting streets and deserted alleyways to be found in Book of Hours, it is safe to say that I am on board with Cloud Boat. It is difficult to create soundscapes that are at once dreamy and entrancing, yet still actively interesting. It is, however, very easy for each track to sound the same, if this is the route taken.
Book of Hours takes you on an eerie and exciting journey that is over all too soon. I found myself walking through a desolate, apocalyptic city while traveling through the craftily broken, disjointed moods Cloud Boat creates here. There are standard indie ballads with lilting vocals scattered throughout the debris, but the group’s strengths by far lie within the soundscape.
Lyric heavy tracks like “Youthern” and “Kowloon Bridge” are perfectly good, but they don’t hold a candle to the vast, orchestral “Amber Road” or the downright macabre “You Find Me.” The latter includes such disturbing, warbled, otherworldly vocals, that you can’t not listen to. There is success in the attempts at combining the two. The dreary strings and falsetto vocals of “Dréan” work well. As do the industrial clatter and chilling songbird coos of a backup female vocalist.
One particularly gratifying experience is “Wanderlust.” It takes fizzy and staticy sounds, leading into strong, wailing lead vocals, and back to the discomforting path the song originally started on. It’s akin to tuning in and out of a series of alternative radio stations. Or wandering through the already established setting of a city in ruins. Where each step you take, each glance you make, tells a different story.
One notable let down is the two-parter, “Pink Grin.” “Pink Grin I” prepares you for something epic, but its followup doesn’t really go anywhere. Which isn’t to say that it isn’t a great song. It is. It’s just overlong and over-hyped.
As a whole, however, I cannot overhype Cloud Boat’s Book of Hours. Not far into the opening track, “Lions on the Beach,” I knew that I was not in for anything static or emotionless. And, to be frank, that’s what I was expecting. Thank you, Cloud Boat, for proving this cynical reviewer wrong.
Rating: Badass
