Concert Review: Future Clouds & Radar

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In a city that has only the faintest hint of a music scene with a functioning pulse - though locals still like to boast that the blues originated in St. Louis - and very few quirky concert venues, Off Broadway is one of this town's more unique and reliable places to see a show. It gives off a cool and comfortable vibe, like a neighborhood bar that cross-dresses in concert venue clothes. Pictures of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson giving that most famous of salutes line its brick walls, a mounted antelope head rests above an old time cigarette machine in a venue that's exclusively non-smoking now, various miscellany from the Lemp brewery is scattered throughout, and the sinks in the men's bathroom are stained with a black liquid that, while hinting at something far more sinister, only adds to the charm. A few rows of folding chairs are included almost as an afterthought, while the upstairs section offers a perfect view of the stage below for those concertgoers who'd prefer to avoid the pit and the urchins that swarm there.

My brother and I arrived early enough to catch the tail end of Future Clouds & Radar's sound check. With plenty of time to kill after this minor invasion of band privacy, it was enjoyable just soaking in Off Broadway's aesthetic and engaging in conversation ranging from which artist has the most obnoxious fans (Dylan, and it's not debatable) to deep-seeded childhood fears of being sodomized by the Knights of Columbus (it never happened). As this talk deteriorated we expected people to filter as the show's start time grew closer, but no one really did. Even after second opening act The O's wrapped up, the place was far too empty.

Blame it on the fact that it was a Thursday and that there are few places on earth as miserable as St. Louis in February - if you don't like gray punctuated with occasional bursts of lighter gray, leave now - but the show was, and this is being generous, sparsely attended. Yet those who stayed away missed their chance to see a band that, if there's any justice in the music world, will eventually outgrow the confines of such venues. Drawing heavily from their truly underrated and death-heavy 2008 album Peoria, Future Clouds & Radar played an energetic set that emphasized tight arrangements over the instrumental meanderings and studio effects of both Peoria and their self-titled debut album. Sure, lead singer Robert Harrison sounds eerily like that other band that had a Harrison in it, but in a live setting this similarity was far less pronounced. The atmospheric "Epcot View" featured nice harmonies and emphasized keyboards more than its album version, while "18 Months" was chaotic and heavy with distortion; one dancing fan, still clad in his suit and clutching his beer bottle like a life raft, punctuated with the latter song with some groin-splitting high kicks. Other songs more clearly revealed the melodies that are sometimes buried amid the studio tinkering, especially "Mummified," "The Mortal" and "Drugstore Bust."

Though Harrison may still be best known for his work with previous project Cotton Mather - at least judging from the applause that greeted Kon Tiki track and concert closer "Homefront Cameo" - Future Clouds & Radar seem to be flying under the, well, radar. The band's performance Thursday night was an intriguing showcase in how songs that incorporate studio enhancements and mix musical genres are translated in a live environment. Without exception the songs benefited from this focus, with the band playing a lively set of songs. For those in attendance it was every bit as good as the under appreciated Peoria, and, even better, allowed listeners to hear its songs in a different context. Still it's a shame more people didn't stop by to hear it, the gray St. Louis February be damned. One can't help but think that the "antipathy island" mentioned in "The Mortal" could serve as a fitting summation for the band's tour stop here.

Music Review: Future Clouds and Radar - Peoria

Future Clouds & Radar’s self-titled debut album was an ambitious and ballsy 27-song behemoth. At its best it was bold, experimental, and melodic indie-pop, with cryptic, sometimes mysterious lyrics and a mind-numbing number of musical styles synthesized into a creative and adventurous mixture.

Though its musical influences were sometimes too obvious – singer and lyricist Robert Harrison and the rest of the band clearly studied hard at Beatles U and probably minored in Guided By Voices. – its major flaw was that its sheer volume of material frequently varied in quality. For this reason comparisons to warts-and-all albums like The White Album and Sandinista were on target. It begged to be paired down and to have the fat trimmed (even the most successful giant albums contain some stink bombs; the Holy Grail in indieland, The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs, would probably have been better as 60 Love Songs). Either a simple coincidence noticed by geeky music critics or tacit acknowledgment that this debut album was overly stuffed and jammed up with musical ideas, Future Clouds and Radar’s follow-up album Peoria checks in at just eight songs in under 35 minutes. Though musically reminiscent of that debut album – that Beatles influence hasn’t faded, and some of the songs are still saturated with a whole wonderful mess of guitars, horns, keyboards, beats, creeks, cracks, sci-fi noises, and claps – Peoria is more refined, direct, and accessible. It even contains identifiable themes that connect the songs.

Though the songs still contain a lot of instrumentation, there’s more breathing room this time around. Even better, the genre-hopping is more successful and less forced and self-indulgent than on the band’s sprawling debut. Several songs are simply built around guitars, keyboards, and strings, which gives the melodies a more prominent role than before; the album ends with a long instrumental section that nicely sums up the various musical tricks and traits employed throughout. If snatches of some songs are perhaps still too experimental for their own good – the opening horns on “Eighteen Months” are damn cheesy and the space alien noises on the last few minutes of “Mummified” are a bit excessive – overall the release places “traditional” melodies on an even playing field with the band’s more out-there tendencies.

The songs’ shimmering arrangements are sharply contrasted by the album’s mostly bleak subject matter. Much of the album can be interpreted as ruminations on mortality, isolation, and loneliness disguised as love songs (“We’re only dust,” Harrison deadpans in “Mummified”). Images of death, war, and violence run through nearly every song; it’s a veritable audio bone yard. “The Epcot View” references a “dark prince…licking the bones of his very last foe,” “Old Edmund Ruffin” opens with the heartwarming story of a drowned mockingbird, and in “The Mortal” Harrison sings about someone’s dream of being “alone on antipathy island surrounded by bitters and bones.” The album also includes enough mentions of burials and funerals to make an undertaker giddy, including the “victory coffin” of “Follow the Crane” and the lovely romantic sentiment Harrison expresses in “Mummified”: “there’s room for both of us/ in my cool sarcophagus.” Though Harrison’s lyrics are sometimes open-ended and allow some light to creep in, however uneasily or uncertain – closing track “Follow the Crane” implies a sense of fidelity and devotion in the face of death – the lyrics are mostly dark. “We all crawled like dogs from cradle to grave,” Harrison declares in “Mortal,” a humorless sentiment that is dominant throughout the album. Although Peoria wears its musical influences proudly, it’s still an exciting and musically textured album that shows Future Clouds and Radar effectively applying a more sophisticated instrumental and lyrical focus.