Yes, I couldn’t come up with anything clever enough for the title of this review, so instead, I just decided to be as upfront with my opinion on the album as possible because, sweet fancy Moses, is this album a monster. For those of you not familiar with Chicago’s own Lucky Cloud, I can’t blame you, and neither could the band. Lucky Cloud is the new passion project from Minor Moon guitarist Chet Zenor, which he only unveiled to the public late last year. Written, recorded, and mixed over the last four years with his friends and fellow Minor Moon bandmates Max Subar and Jason Ashworth, Lucky Cloud’s debut LP Foreground is anything but your ordinary labor of love; Foreground is a steadfast musical statement on life, love, and an unwavering impetus towards expressing true human vulnerability. Reading that back, I’m not sure how much sense I’m making, but that’s only because I’m deliriously in love with this album and can’t think straight at the moment. The gorgeously nostalgic and impassioned album artwork is only the beginning in a long list of all the reasons why Foreground is an absolute masterpiece of jazzy, emotive, twangy indie rock.
The album opens with “Undertow”, a beautiful Jeff Buckley-inspired alt-country waltz that subverts any expectations one might have coming from the Minor Moon camp with the sultry, jazzy atmosphere it codifies throughout its nearly two-minute-long intro before settling into a simple yet lush drum beat embezzled with twang-affirming slide guitar. As Chet sings, “There’s a heaven on the Earth”, I am affirmed in my belief that this song creates an ambiance over its five-minute runtime that is not unlike what I imagine Heaven to be. Picking an opening song for your album is no small task, but Lucky Cloud gets it right as it’s the perfect mood-setter for everything to come.
I have next to no criticisms for this album, but if I had to pick a low point, I’d say it’s the next song, “You Know”, only because it’s a bit too jazzy for my tastes. To its credit, it gets better with every listen as I learn what to expect and the melodies become easier to comprehend and appreciate, but in an album with so many ridiculous highs (more to come on that later!), I find it difficult to complain at all; after all, as a rabid Minor Moon fan, I’m really feasting on this album! This song does have some great moments of unique instrumentation with the inclusion of vibraphone and saxophone melodies, but the chorus isn’t my favorite, so I don’t come back to this one as much. However, with it only being the second song on the album, I almost never skip it, and it just makes me all the more excited for the rest of the album.
“Invitation” kicks up the pace quite a bit with incredibly fun, jangly guitars that give way to an overall vibe of “auteur slacker rock” to my ears. The chorus on this one is an absolute blast and just makes you want to jump in the shower immediately so you can have a safe space to dance and sing unabashedly. “Invitation”, in addition to a few other songs on this album, scratches this itch not too many other artists are able to scratch for me. I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly, but Chet Zenor and friends are able to mesh all these influences together into one cohesive piece of music that sounds so familiar yet totally and completely unique. If you were to ask me to find another song I love that sounds like “Invitation”, I might be able to come up with a handful of artists that sound lightly similar, but nothing would really compare. I give all the credit to Chet Zenor’s warm and comforting voice that, although similar to a small group of well-known artists, feels completely unique paired against his jazzy alt-country songwriting that compliments his voice in a way that I adore endlessly.
“Vacant Eyes” is for all you Minor Mooners (it took me a good ten minutes to come up with that name, and I’m so proud of it) out there, sounding like it’s straight off the presses from either the Tethers or The Light Up Waltz sessions. Disregarding the lyrics for a second, the instrumentation reminds me of a slow, romantic waltz you’d sway to at a school dance, and to be honest, the lyrics could be the most hopelessly depressing lyrics of all time, and I still don’t think that would sway me away from that comparison.
Much like “Vacant Eyes”, “The Birds” reminds me of my favorite Andrew Bird songs where there’s an underlying playfulness to the guitars and vocals but done in a very artful manner; what I’m trying to say is that if you are both a playful and serious person, this album is your Eat, Pray, Love and you should pick up a copy at your earliest convenience. The song starts out with some addictive, perky verse vocal melodies in the first half before hitting you with a moody, M. Ward-esque stylistic change-up that will stop you in your tracks. In many ways, “The Birds” feels like a spiritual sister track to “Vacant Eyes” in that it offers a lot of the same emotions, colors, and vibes but packaged up in a different shape and size. These two songs back-to-back give the album a nice added layer of cohesion while offering up imagery that you can’t get elsewhere on the record.
The next track “Laughter Yoga” in many ways is a sort of transitional track on the album, at least for me, but I do not mean that in a bad way at all; it just so happens to come right before my favorite part of the album so I can’t help but look ahead. The song has a bit of energy to it, like what we saw in “Invitation”, but it’s now conjoined with a healthy dose of pensive and emotional melodies like what we heard in “Vacant Eyes” or “The Birds”. It features some of the best lead guitar melodies on the album as well as an absolute killer chorus where Chet laments the disintegration of a relationship that was destined to fail from the beginning. There’s a lively anger to the song that brings me back consistently, and it’s made that much stronger by its placement right under “The Birds” and right before the sultry “Hours”.
Reader, be warned, discussion of the final three songs of Foreground will be nothing short of the most disgustingly affectionate and sickening displays of positive rhetoric you’ve ever read in an album review. “Hour” is quite simply one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard in my life. I’m a linguistically hyperbolic person by nature, but I’m dead serious about this being one of the coolest, soothing songs I’ve heard. Every time I play this song, I imagine I’m in some smokey New York City basement lounge, and I drift into a beautiful, vegetative state of being where there are no sorrows, worries, or sadness at all. This song is expressive almost to a fault and gets me excited to play this album over and over again just to get to this point in the track-list. This comparison isn’t the most accurate, but if Bill Callahan tried writing an And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out-era Yo La Tengo song, “Hour” just might be that. Does that not sound like the greatest song?
“Vacation Again”, the first song Chet Zenor put out under his Lucky Cloud project, kicks up the pace again, sounding like Wilco on adrenaline with a guitar tone that would make J Mascis blush. Mourning all the plans and future dreams left unfulfilled after the dissolution of a relationship, “Vacation Again” is a deceptively simple rocker that weaves in and out of driving verses, impressive pre-chorus crescendos, and what may very well be the best chorus on the album. Simply put, “Vacation Again” is just such a great song with so many unique and compelling melodies, but distilled in such a catchy way that you’ll hit yourself for not writing it yourself. The only complaint I can produce is that this song isn’t ten minutes.
Last, but certainly not least, “Foreground”, the title track of Lucky Cloud’s debut album, closes things out with a masterful bang. The song is jaunty, playful, and endearing, yearning with the fire that only a passion project saved from the brink of total abandonment could conjure. Featuring some of the best drumming on the record by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy’s son Spencer Tweedy, the song buzzes and skips along with glorious syncopated rhythms that bring out the unabashed air drummer in me. The song glistens with layers of lead guitar and slide embellishments that complement the vocals so well, unleashing an array of colors that would have otherwise been muted; lyrics like “I saw you in the foreground, you saw me in the background” only make those array of colors that much stronger and brighter.
This album is truly such a gift and challenges all my favorite albums by Chicago-based artists for top billing. This album will unfortunately go under the radar for most of the people that would adore it, but with time, I’m confident it will reach who it is meant to reach. Thank you to Sam Cantor of Minor Moon for suggesting I give this album a spin; what a gift that suggestion turned out to be. I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful addition to the Minor Moon musical universe, and I can’t wait for my vinyl pre-order to arrive. If you are a fan of artists like Andy Shauf, Andrew Bird, Cass McCombs, M. Ward, Wilco, or Bill Callahan, I highly suggest giving Lucky Cloud a chance and picking up their debut album, Foreground. If you’re in town on April 5th, Schubas is hosting Lucky Cloud’s Foreground album release show with support from Lake J and Shoulderbird, and I highly suggest taking advantage of such an event to see if Lucky Cloud is the band for you.