The Clouds Are Ghosts

If you do a bit of digging on The Clouds are Ghosts, you'll see a uniformly-positive opinion between the Austinist, the Austin Chronicle, and Austin Town Hall - The quartet has broken one of the glass barriers that a lot of indies struggle with: Local press.

In any city, that's a struggle (a prophet in his own town, as it were). But in a market like ours, with hundreds, if not thousands, of bands to choose from... Let's just say the boys and girl in the band must be doing something right to make Austin's press pay enough attention to actually devote a bit of precious column space to them.

That's Jason Morris on the far left there - His is the voice of the group. Next to him is Erin Fillingame, who tickles the ivories (if we can speak so cavalierly about an obviously-gifted talent). To her immediate right is Jason Flitcraft - He plays traditional strings (violin and guitar). Not pictured is percussionist Kevin Butler, apparently grafted into the team whilest recording their debut LP at Test Tube Audio. On the far right is Steven Paul, who plays guitar and presumably pulls those awesome airy sounds out of the synths he commands.

And Awesome is the correct word: The tracks these guys have cut for their self-titled LP inspire respect with their instrumentation and compositional style, made even more towering by some serious production chops. Which they have in abundance. Chops, that is.

Any other instruments, and you'd tag 'em as experimental; thus associating them with careless dissonance and psychedelically-inspired slop. But because they bring classical piano and violin and quartet-sounding synths, it gives their sound an air of convincing authority. For fear of being dubbed a cultural idiot, you're almost afraid not to agree that they bear significance: It's that classical instrumentation, coupled with Morris' stretching, emotive vocals, that's drawing the ewws and awes.

For good cause. Check out the top-notch production values on "Atomic Daydream":
Notice the studio cleanliness, coupled with just a smidge of reverb: It gives these pieces a nice airy depth, suggesting the gravitas that we'd call their core sound. Great recording, nice mix, professional mastering - The Clouds Are Ghosts have brought their A game, folks.

Compositionally, the guys and gal wear the "experimental" label politely - They rarely depart from verse-chorus-verse structures, and only dip a toe into harmonic dissonance - Usually just enough to make a musical point. This approach liberates them to do very nice simplistic arrangements of dense melodies: Check out the minimalistic "We Are Not Alone", and try not to get swept up with the pathos of the piano, backed by the swirlish pads; both painted over at the whim of Morris' vox:
Now take a listen to "Insomnia", and watch how they've wedged random vox into nice atmospheric pads, all behind a simplistic keyboard melody; ending up with a compelling, hypnotic soundscape:
Mostly hailing from Beaumont (Morris hails from Savannah, GA), they've been around for 3+ years, playing spots all over (including some you'd think are not a fit for their sound): Mohawk, Stubb's, The Highball, Beauty Bar, Club de Ville, The Scoot Inn, Elysium, Trophy's, Red 7. And though Austin is home, they've traveled to Dallas/Denton/Fort Worth for a gig or two, and have been seen as far away as Athens GA, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington DC, and New Orleans.

The scuttlebutt is they're working on LP 2, which will then be followed up with gigs 'a plenty, most likely here in the Austin area, probably at your venue of choice.

We'll leave you with the debut LP, well worth a download (free at the time of this writing), and definitely a worthy of a fully-attended listen:
Find out more about The Clouds are Ghosts on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, BandCamp, and Home Base.

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