Review: Cloakroom - Further Out
By Chris Reinbold, Staff Writer
[Run For Cover; 2015]
Rating: 4.5/10
Key Tracks: “Mesmer,” “Deep Sea Station”
Cloakroom is a shoegaze band comprised of three factory workers from the American Midwest. Upon listening to the group’s newest release on Run For Cover, Further Out, it's easy to imagine the trio slaving away in the factories during the day and moonlighting as a trio of bone-crushingly heavy pedal stompers. Cloakroom displays a uniquely industrial sound in its music, from the barebones, basic foundation laid by the rhythm section to the metallic and sometimes grating guitar sounds.
Throughout the album, Cloakroom maintains mostly the same formula: a basic but destructive rhythm section, a guitar that rolls around in a tumult of effects, and Doyle Martin’s nasally, subdued vocal delivery. This songwriting formula can make the album drag, and there are some noises harbored by this collection of songs that will leave you scratching your head.
On “Lossed Over,” the band members lock together so tightly that the way they strike their notes in unison makes it sound like someone is tapping on the lower keys of a Steinway & Sons baby grand piano. At the end of “Asymmetrical,” the finishing guitar leads build from a simple, sliding pattern into an explosive siren’s song of a solo, as if harvested directly from the ocean’s waves.
On the album’s instrumental cut, “Mesmer,” the three-piece seems to be writing less for an album and more for a suspense or thriller movie soundtrack. The track opens with a cinematic, eerie bass line that flows directly into one of the most ear-catching guitar parts on Further Out. The guitar is produced so well that the pick scraping against the strings is clearly audible, in a nearly acoustic guitar-like fashion as a dirty tornado of delay can be heard buried in the background. The way the guitar and bass intertwine builds the song as if it is meant to accompany the images of a teenager locking doors and hiding in a closet, waiting for the masked murderer to find a way inside the house. The song ends in a fade without resolving to any big climax. “Mesmer” leaves the listener wanting more.
Another key track is the album’s closer, “Deep Sea Station,” clocking in at just less than seven minutes. Martin provides a subdued vocal throughout a vast majority of the album, but on this cut, he provides the most up-tempo vocal performance on the album and possibly of the band’s catalog.
The song also demonstrates how far some variation can go in the realm of shoegaze. Not a single second of the near seven minutes is boring. The instrumentation meshes together very well and allows each player to showcase a little bit, but not in a showboating sense. Toward the end, Martin sprinkles guitar leads into the rhythm work that come off as sounding relatively unrehearsed and surprisingly soulful. The track ends with the sound of a rewinding tape coupled with an acoustic guitar that is nothing less than trance inducing.
Unfortunately, most of the album is incredibly formulaic, as mentioned previously. The vocals lack variety, usually falling just short of lulling the listener to sleep. Most of the instrumentation is very basic and fails to expand beyond a simple 4/4 time signature and eighth notes, but when it does, it goes above and beyond. The production is very tight and is a clear step forward from 2013’s Infinity. However, the songwriting has not matured in a way that it should. In fact, it is almost a step backward, as all five tracks on Infinity kept the listener engaged, unlike many of the skip-worthy tracks on this full length album.
