MEMORIALS
All Clouds Bring Not Rain
FIRE
All Clouds Bring Not Rain is the fascinating, often fantastic, and ultimately frustrating new album from MEMORIALS, an ongoing collaboration between Verity Susman and Matthew Simms. Both come with attractive curricula vitae: Since 2011, Simms has been a member of Wire, who have had one of the greatest third acts in rock music history; for her part, Susman was the co-leader of the sparkling Electrelane, a subtle and persuasive band who sounded like a cloudy late afternoon in early October when you walk through the park and realize that the break-up you just endured was probably for the best. All Clouds is the fifth album Susman and Simms have made since 2023 under this defiantly all-uppercase moniker, and it’s considerably more ornate and ambitious than their earlier minimalist-ambient work. There’s a lot to love on this album, not the least being its nearly steroidal affection for the wobbly, corny, throbbing, thumping, and ecstatic corners of the neo-psychedelic scene; but first, let’s talk about donuts.
I used to frequent a stunning donut shop in Westwood called Stan’s. They sold a mind- (and gut-) bending object that was an entire peanut butter cup inside of a donut. Loving both peanut butter cups and donuts, I couldn’t help but buy this aorta-hating pillow of sweetness; yet each time, I was like, “Oh, that’s way too much.” Just because I love peanut butter cups and I love donuts, that doesn’t mean I have to put them both in my mouth at once. And that, friends, is All Clouds Bring Not Rain in a nutshell (or delectable pastry coating): It’s a lot of everything—a peanut butter cup inside of a donut, inhaled again and again with barely time for a Diet Sprite in between.
The record begins with a majestic prelude that echoes Hubert Parry and Stephin Merritt, segueing seamlessly into a roaring, hypnotic thrill-ride of Stereolab-ish rhythm-’n’-roar, then back again. It sounds like the motorik, France Gall-ian music of my occasional dreams. But for the next 45 minutes, All Clouds refuses to get out of its own way. Remember that sweet spot of big-little indie rock in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when a band could be influenced by Nuggets and NEU! and Nico’s Desert Shore and A Certain Ratio and Nilsson and Joseph Byrd all at the same time? MEMORIALS do, and they want to make sure we know it. The result is something where the whole is lesser than the sum of the parts, because virtually each track, heard on its own, is pretty goddamn stunning (perhaps if MEMORIALS had released this as a series of EPs it could’ve been a genius collection of exotic miracles); but compiled end on end on an album, it’s just too much, like being locked in a dorm room with a friend who wants you to hear all of their favorite records (“Wait, don’t leave, we haven’t gotten to Van Dyke Parks yet!”).
When it does approach the truly holy (“Reimagined River” is like your favorite Dennis Wilson song if it was recorded by early Magnetic Fields), you really want to root for MEMORIALS; you want to hold them close and say, “It’s OK, you don’t have to change from 4/4 to 3/4 abruptly while simultaneously reminding us of The Passions and the Strawberry Alarm Clock, we’ll still love you.” But before you know it, they’re off and running on another genre-scrambling escapade which will leave you wondering, “What if The Cowsills, King Crimson, and Young Marble Giants had a baby?” Which is all to say: I really like All Clouds Bring Not Rain, this delightful, tumbling, harmony-piled salute to the culture of culty music, even if it ends up feeling like an entire peanut cup inside of a donut.
