WhatsUpLisbon Alpha

It's the songs. No matter how much talk is spent unraveling the progression of the Cleveland group and the poetic, harmonic, formal qualities gathered and/or lost over nine albums, it's in the memorable trail of the song that their essence endures. Anthemic, lived with heart on sleeve and the urgency of the words that break free, without ever falling into the populist trap (lol, Arcade Fire), but crafted for full-throated chorus and a fixed place in the indie collective consciousness: 'Wasted Days', 'Modern Act', 'On an Edge' or, of course, 'I'm Not Part of Me' in a long list that the most die-hard stans will always shuffle in the memory of that moment when the world seemed full of possibilities or Dylan Baldi's words reflected that college crush. A fundamental part of a possible indie lore that can be born anywhere and shaped the character of Superchunk, Built to Spill or Wavves. Without dwelling on that past, germinated in the lo-fi solitude of a first self-titled album and made real from the canonical 'Attack on Memory', the band led by Baldi, flanked by his longtime sidekick Jayson Gerycz on drums and multi-instrumentalist Chris Brown, continues to match step with their own songwriting instincts with 'Final Summer', their first album on Pure Noise after years of militancy on Carpark. Without deviating too much from a formula outlined in the aforementioned 'Attack on Memory' and definitively stamped on 'Here and Nowhere Else' — a blend of the energy of Hüsker Dü's 'New Day Rising' with the pop instinct of The Replacements — with the necessary twists and turns to keep things fresh over a discography where the ragged dirt of the guitars and the propulsion of the drums served a very catchy sensibility, 'Final Summer' brightens the production and, consequently, the aura of Cloud Nothings in 10 songs that evoke that naturalness of someone who has nothing left to prove. And they don't. So let's sing. BS.