Next month sees the release of I Know, I Know, the first full-band record by Montague, Massachusetts indie folk band Cloudbelly. The band started out as the recording project of Corey Laitman, but has since expanded its line-up with the addition of “guitarist and ambient sound sculptor” Sam Perry (SVIP), “drummer, producer and sound mangler” Nate Mondschein (Best Mann), and “bassist/keyboardist/arranger” Reed Sutherland. Together, the group take Laitman’s emotive and poetic songs and bend them into a myriad of shapes, from gentle and vulnerable folk songs to catchy and cathartic indie rock anthems. Strings soar and subtle beats and electronics bubble up from some unseen wellspring, all coming together in and experimental but emotionally immediate style.
Following last year’s ‘November’, which we said “[took the] melancholy of the titular month and infus[ed] it with a marching rhythm to evoke the precious fragility of love,” Cloudbelly have now released another single from the record. ‘If You Want’ was actually the first track they completed for the album and proves the perfect introduction for new listeners. What the label describe as “an impassioned conversation between two voices residing in the same body, reckoning with a tendency to run from the things you want the most,” the song starts slow and syrupy, warm and nostalgic but tempered with a sharp edge of loss and regret and conflicted emotion.