Cloud Control make the kind of sweaty, atmospheric rock that makes you want to jump up and down on the spot for long periods of time. Stars in their native Australia having won a prestigious music award, they are just breaking through in the UK, having been regulars on this summer’s festival circuits promoting their debut album Bliss Release. Cloud Control’s folky, psychedelic bent has drawn comparisons with Fleet Foxes and Avi Buffalo, but ignore the meaningless categorisations, turn up the speakers and pretend your bedroom is a mountain vista. I caught up with bassist Jeremy Kelshaw during their UK tour.
How would you describe the sound of Cloud Control?
I don’t! I go to great lengths to describe to people that I try not to. Describing music is not my job, it’s your job! Our references are quite varied; a lot of people hear a lot of different things which is a good thing I think.
Cloud Control are often compared to other psychedelic folk acts such Avi Buffalo and Fleet Foxes. Is that a fair comparison?
Yes and no. I can see that people say that but I don’t think we sound a lot like those, I mean if you’re a band that write vocal melodies with harmonies and stuff like that which uses reverb then you’re going to get Fleet Foxes comparisons. It’s not a bad thing but I don’t think that tells the whole story at all.
So are those comparisons just a way of pigeonholing the band?
People love to do that, that’s just what we do, that’s the nature of the business. People want to read something short and snappy and know what we sound like. But listening to music’s not really like that, you can’t really do that… You’ve got to go on a journey with people’s music because they put a lot of time into it so you’ve got to make up your own mind.
You come from the Blue Mountains in Australia and there is a sense of scale to your sound. Has the Australian landscape influenced your music?
We all grew up in the Blue Mountains and we sort of wrote the album half in the city and half in the mountains and then we recorded it half in the mountains, in our parents lounge rooms and things like that, and half in the city. So it does have qualities of both areas. I think as much as that has an impact on our kind of music I also think our relationships with each other and our relationships with our parents have had as much of an impact. We didn’t really go out there to make a record where you could put a pin on the map and say that definitely belongs in this region. At the same time we didn’t try to avoid it either, we tried to make music that was natural to us and natural to the environment that we’re in.
What’s the music scene like in the part of Australia where you’re from?
There’ lots of things going on in Sydney so when you’re in a mountains band you have to make the journey down there which isn’t that far. There are lots of people making music in garages and lounges, but there are not a lot of places to play live which forces everybody into the city. In the mountains there’s a little bit of a hip hop scene and there’s a folk scene as well, that play acoustic shows at cafes and things like that. But there’s heaps of stuff going on in the city. Like in any international city, there are good venues and bad venues… In the last two or three years I think we’ve noticed an increase in the quality of the music coming out of Sydney. There are a lot of good bands and there are a lot of bigger bands playing Australian venues that were kind of reserved for international acts. There are a lot of bands pushing up and filling those international venues, it’s cool to be a part of that.
What do you think of the English music scene? Have you seen a lot of live music whilst you’ve been touring here?
I think the others have and we’ve seen the bands we’ve played with at festivals and things like that. But I mean I’m only seeing stuff at the festivals we’re playing at. There’s loads going on but it’s hard to feel a part of it when you’ve not grown up with it. We’re sort of parachuting in and you need to have earned your stripes a little bit too because people are kind of like “who are you?” It’d be great to spend some more time here is what I’m saying I guess and get to see more bands. There’s something great about playing with a band and you kind of get to know them and it’s unique. You get to know the music a little bit, you get to know the people a little bit and they kind of go together.
You’ve been playing with Arcade fire- do you get to hang out with Win and Regine?
That was one of the shows I couldn’t do, it wasn’t me everyone else did it! They said it was amazing though!
Oh no, were you disappointed to miss that?
The stage caught fire at the beginning of the night at one point, a tiny light caught fire, and it looked like it was all going wrong. Everybody said it was an unbelievable show and the arcade fire guys were great. A lot of them came to watch the show which was cool; you don’t often get that with big international bands that have a lot on their plate. It seems like they’re a band who keep their fingers on the pulse of what their support band are playing which is definitely cool.
Do you have a particular highlight of your career so far? Have you ever thought, I’ve made it now?
I don’t know when you know if you’ve made it! I think it’s when you start making a living from it… I think out here you kind of get to know about it from your own headline tours. We’ve done a couple of tours out here; the last one was pretty strong. We did XOYO in London which is much bigger than anything we’ve ever played before as a headliner ourselves and that sold out which was pretty cool.
One of the highlights was Hurricane Festival in Germany, where there was a really strong crowd for us but we got rained off stage after one song so we didn’t kind of come through on the goods which is a bit of a shame.
Do crowds in different countries react differently?
It’s so hard to compare Australia to anyone else, because that’s our home country and we just have a different relationship with the crowd there because we’re just a lot more well known. Playing at home is always kind of great because we’ve got big crowds there and they’re always kind of into it. Here we’re kind of where we were at home three years ago really, making good inroads but it’s a big difference. Some of the different places across Europe are different… We had a really good show in Paris a while ago and I love playing in Paris, we love playing in Amsterdam particularly and we love playing in Germany as well. Those are the places where we’ve played the most so it’s great to go to these random places and have people that you’ve never met know you’re music.
What’s next for Cloud Control?
In the short term we’re going to start writing our next record soon, get some new material out as quickly as possible. It’s kind of weird because we’re doing the circuit here at the moment and we’ve done the same circuit already at home with the same album. It’s not that we’re getting bored of our songs I think there just a genuine desire to play new stuff because we’re creative beings and we want to create and it would be good to get some new stuff in our set.
It’s just a different headspace being on the road for writing, so I think there’s this whole other part of it that we’ve kind of…had to put on the back burner while we do all the live stuff. We find it hard to put our feet in both camps all the time, so we’re really looking forward to just kind of dedicating some time to writing some new tunes. So yeah, when we’ve got a second album which will hopefully be next year or maybe early the year after we’re not sure, the plan will maybe be to release it everywhere simultaneously so we can tour endlessly.