Artist

Cloud Nothings

US indie rock band

Cleveland, United States · Formed 2009

Cloud Nothings is a music group from Cleveland, United States, active since 2009. Their discography on Gatefold includes 13 records.

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Albums tracked

In collections

2009

Since

Biography

Dylan Baldi started out recording blown-out pop tunes directly into a computer mic in his parents' basement, pretending he had a full group behind him just to get booked. Then he hired actual players—most notably monster drummer Jayson Gerycz—and dragged Steve Albini in to strip the buzz off the tape. That turned a cute bedroom pop project into a snarling, live-room juggernaut that could blow the doors off a club in three minutes flat. They went through the usual mid-career wobble when the production got a little too polished on records like Life Without Sound, but they snapped back fast. When Baldi cuts the gloss, leans into Gerycz's unrelenting drum fills, and just screams over a jagged power chord, nobody touches them. It is lean, sweaty American post-hardcore disguised as pop songs.

Bio from The Clerk

The Arc of Cloud Nothings

The pivots — what forced Cloud Nothings to reinvent.

The Basement Tapes
Baldi cooked up the earliest material entirely alone, using cheap gear and blown-out levels to mask the solitude. Releases like Turning On sounded like blown-speaker garage pop caught halfway between surf rock and indie punk. It earned him buzz, but it was fundamentally a bedroom concept that could not survive a real stage without an overhaul.
The Albini Blast
Bringing in Jayson Gerycz on drums and booking session time with Steve Albini changed everything for Attack on Memory. Albini captured the band live in the room, trading lo-fi fuzz for cavernous drum tones, screaming distortion, and extended, punishing noise jams like 'Wasted Days.' It turned Cloud Nothings from a blog-rock curiosity into one of the most blistering live rock outfits in the country.
The Polished Plateau
By the late 2010s, the band flirted with cleaner fidelity and more traditional radio-ready power pop on Life Without Sound. John Goodmanson brought a slicker, mid-tempo focus that highlighted Baldi's melodic songwriting but smoothed over some of their feral edges. They pushed back almost immediately on Last Building Burning, ripping through raw, ferocious takes to prove they hadn't lost their bite.
The Homebrewed Resurgence
The 2020 lockdowns forced Baldi and the band back into remote, DIY tracking methods, sparking a massive wave of subscription releases and the home-recorded The Black Hole Understands. That frantic output refined their formula down to pure power pop hooks delivered at breakneck velocity. Leading into Final Summer, they settled into a sweet spot: tight, hook-heavy punk with zero fat on the bone.

Influences

Wipers — Greg Sage's blueprint of paranoid, high-tension punk and jagged guitar leads is all over Baldi's songwriting. You hear it straight through the driving, tense rhythm section and barbed riffs on 'Attack on Memory.' It is pure Pacific Northwest anxiety filtered through Midwest grit.
Hüsker Dü — Bob Mould proved you could marry deafening hardcore speed with airtight melodic pop hooks. Baldi borrows that exact vocal delivery, tearing his throat out while belting big singalong choruses over roaring distortion. It is the gold standard for noisy, melodic Midwestern rock.
The Replacements — Paul Westerberg's scrappy, self-deprecating attitude and heart-on-sleeve lyricism heavily informed Cloud Nothings' early records. You catch the DNA in Baldi's slacker delivery, anthemic mid-tempo hooks, and cynical, plainspoken lyrics. It is the sound of making a mess on purpose and finding a melody inside it.
Shellac — Steve Albini's abrasive guitar tones and stark, unvarnished drum capture were the literal template Baldi chased after getting tired of bedroom fuzz. You hear the sharp, metallic guitar scrapes and room-heavy snare hits directly on tracks like 'Wasted Days.' They took Albini's mathy, dry room sound and slammed it into hook-driven punk.
Nirvana — Baldi has frequently cited In Utero as a core benchmark for balancing hostile noise with immediate pop songwriting. The loud-quiet dynamic shifts and abrasive, throat-shredding hooks across 'Here and Nowhere Else' wear that influence proudly. It is raw, corrosive rock music that still gets stuck in your head for days.