Live Review + Gallery | Crack Cloud @ Lost Horizon, Bristol

Crack Cloud | Clothing

Lost Horizon, Bristol

1st October 2024

Photography by Kazuo Chaed (@lightherfluid)

George Ward

Freelance journalist and online editor for CLUNK. Can be found out and about in Bristol, finding cheap records or having a pint on King Street.

The ever-evolving Crack Cloud return to Bristol to showcase new tunes and show us just how wide their sound ranges

Crack Cloud are a fascinating band. I first caught them all the way back in 2019 at Beaches Brew Festival and every couple of years they pop back up in my life. Started by frontman Zach Choy as a solo project, the Canadian collective slowly grew, with many members meeting through addiction recovery and mental health programmes. With other musicians, artists, producers and visual artists, Crack Cloud has grown into a fluid collective of fascinating minds; with every performance I’ve seen from them, there are new faces, new roles and always new sounds.

Opening the night was Clothing, a singer-songwriter from Mexico. Clothing‘s performance was fantastic, backed only by his acoustic guitar and very subtle vocal effects. Though much of the performance was not in English, it was not impossibly to understand his emotional, sincere and unique storytelling through his simple but beautiful guitar skills and gentle vocals. With one song dedicated to his loving mother in the crowd and another to his friend, tragically missing, his set was a gorgeous, if a little surprising, opener for the night.

It’s not the first time that Crack Cloud have been in Bristol. In fact, in a rare but much needed rest in between songs, drummer and frontman Zach shared that back in 2018, Bristol was the first place they ended up when playing Europe for the first time. Back then, they apparently slept their jet lag off in a park before playing to a crowd of 5 people. But this week, the crowd at Lost Horizon was bubbling with excitement, ready to see just what shape Crack Cloud had moulded themselves into this time around.

Most of their set focused in on their new album ‘Blue Mile’. The tracks have a lighter feel to them, with simpler structures, more upbeat melodies and brighter textures. This is by no means a bad thing. Seeing the band play these tracks felt hopeful and refreshing compared to the darker edge of their earlier work. Instrumentally the band were as tight as ever, with saxophone solos complimenting the more traditional punk instruments effortlessly.

As a frontman, Zach continues to be one of the best. Being able to drum and sing with the ferocity he does is no easy feat and it is a joy to see his full body performances completely transfix the audience. On the slow-burn closing track to ‘Blue Mile,’ ‘Lost On The Red Mile’, he kindly asks the audience to “shut up just for 8 minutes”. What followed was 8 completely dreamlike minutes of bliss, with tasteful solos, patient performances and complete unity complimenting some of Crack Cloud’s strongest songwriting to date.

Of course, it was a lot of fun being thrown back into the older tracks too, with classics from their self-titled project hitting just as hard now as they did 5 years ago and fans rewarded for their patience with some moshable tunes. It’s true that the band have grown a lot since 2019, but it’s a relief they still recognise the freshness, impressiveness and just how fucking fun these jagged post-punk tunes still are.

Check out the full gallery below: