WALK THE MOON at Water Street Music Hall

by Jenny Keller on January 23, 2013

There's nothing better than an $8 show. Except, maybe a really good $8 show.

The Cloud Nothings' performance at the Ninth Ward at Babeville in Buffalo last Monday (4/2) was fast, loud, and nothing short of amazing.

The show started off with a local band from Buffalo of the name Sleepy Hahas. This quirky, openly communist foursome delivered a strong, in your face performance that started off what would become an energetic night. The keyboardist was the coolest cat in the club with his aviators and leather jacket, and added a unique classic rock vibe to the performance.

Next up was A Classic Education who calmed things down a little bit with a melancholy beach sound. Their wavy guitars and clean ripping vocals made them great performers.

The appearance of Cloud Nothings did not exactly match the immense sound that was soon to follow. After lighting some candles to set the mood, Dylan Baldi stepped out in his fluorescent pink shoes. The band took both the heavy sound of the Sleepy Hahas and the grooviness of A Classic Education to deliver a fast-paced, yet precision driven epic of sound.

After starting off with the strong "Fall In," the band went into a 15 minute improv frenzy, with a few songs muddled into the mix. The band has an incredible talent for branching off from their songs into an ever-growing jam session, in which each member is playing their own solo of some sort. The sounds came together in a weirdly perfect and grungy harmony. They reached an ultimate point at which each member was playing as many notes as they could fit into a measure, until they dropped instantly back into a new song with perfect precision. The band played mostly tracks from their new album Attack On Memory with about half of the show dedicated to improvisation.

Overall, the show was a solid performance. The only critiques I have are that Dylan's voice was a little rougher than appears on the album, but this was solved by keeping his vocals behind the rest of the band and by dedicating most of the show to instrumentals. Also, the Cloud Nothings had a relatively short performance with no encore. I would have liked to have heard some of their older hits such as "Hey Cool Kid" or "Understand At All."

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