Cloud Cult

Cloud Cult

Advice From the Happy Hippopotamus

Earthology Records
2005



And so we're brought to the tale of one Craig Minowa of Sandstone, MN. Organic farmer and ecological practivist (that is, "practicing activist," a freebie from me to the cultural hive-mind), he runs his small Earthology label on wind power, geothermal heat, and post-consumer recycled plastic lumber. Reclaimed jewel cases, recycled paper, soy ink, dried leaves for packing materials. All, natch, not for profit. An unreconstructed city-boy like your hack here is baffled: there it is, he says in moments of frustration, apparently it's perfectly possible. When do we all get retrofitted? I wonder what Minowa thinks about all this mess with war in oil-rich territory, skyrocketing fuel prices, and corporate oil-mongers renting out our government. I mean, I'm sure I can guess what he thinks—it's all mad and bad and awful—but how does he feel it most directly; what's the first, wordless, gut response? Blinding fury? Deep sadness? Or that tight little snicker of the powerlessly damned that so many of us (your hack here included) have honed to perfection?

I only ask because, given his eco-practivism, it doesn't show up on this record much at all. No, I'm not about to castigate the man for leaving his politics (is that the correct word?) off this particular table; his decision to live how he would otherwise merely preach, leaving his music to reach into the deeper realms of immediate experience, is more than admirable. Our loudest yellers, our more virulent partisans, and our most dead-eyed spectators could do to take heed. For once, the political is not the least bit personal; the Cloud Cult manifesto begins and ends with nothing so ordinary as the less-than-simple matters of life and death—where they begin and end, converge and dovetail, and separate. This is usually the point in any mention of Minowa or Cloud Cult in which an aching tragedy is aired out, and its resonance and meaning supposedly dissected, but, I imagine, mostly guessed at. I won't touch it. Not just because I couldn't begin to guess at that, or that it feels a bit ghoulish to trot it out and attempt do so, whether or not Minowa has allowed or abetted it, or even barring the pretty-good chance that it does have some resonance or meaning (for anyone else?); but in the face of so much vibrant, defiant life, it simply seems pointless.

The bulk of Happy Hippopotamus seems born from the mind (or minds, as the Cult include a pretty large rotating cast, with Craig as spiritual guide) of a precocious, preternaturally wise child. We're introduced to the "Happy Hippo" early. He loves his happy hippopotamus. She lives under his matt-er-uss. "She leads the way!" he caterwauls. Later, on "Washed Your Car," a breezy jaunt through unrequited puppy love, he recounts how he "mowed your lawn yesterday "and you gave him six bucks and he said, "Let's have some lemonade, "and you said "Go away." He "shoveled your snow with an ice-cream cone" and "tilled your garden with my nose." Even when dealing most directly with the most-un-childlike things, Minowa gives the subject matter a bouncy, almost flippant kick; reminding you that "you've got your bones to make a beat," and "you've got your skin to sing a song, you better sing a super-swell song"—swell?—and elsewhere to "suck it up, even though they spit you out" on the amped-up "Living On the Outside of Your Skin." Minowa flings out his lines like arrows, with a yelp redolent of the most enthusiastic singers-who-can't-really-sing (Isaac Brock, most immediately), and couches them within essentially simple, familiar indie-rock structures—from blaring Mouse-style rave-ups like "Moving to Canada" ("the people watched complacently / And swore their god had meant for it to be this way," the only present-day politics on the record), to quick-strummed acoustic\electric indie-hop like "Living On the Outside...." Cloud Cult's debt to hip-hop beat stylings can't be underestimated; they all but begin the record by festooning it with the bounce and shimmy from "Rock the Bells," and keep the upbeat down for the preponderance of the record’s (admittedly maybe a few songs too long) length.

So perhaps it sounds all too "usual" for some, that the old "spoonful of sugar" trope is such a cliché, but I prefer to think of Advice From the Happy Hippopotamus as joining a long line of wonderful, all-too-necessary, pop that's got little more on its mind than making a celebration out of the real stuff of life—loss, mortality, and decay of all kinds included—and bringing it into the sunlight to be danced upon and trod over. Minowa and crew take it all and keep it real, dealing directly, heart-on-sleeve, without judgment, without simplistic good and evil, without sin or salvation. Just as simple, everyday fact; with a beat you can dance to, and call to just get on with it. - Stylus Magazine

I remember being very young, walking through the flea market with my parents on random weekends. I was never quite sure why we were there, outside of the fact that the closest KarmelKorn store was next door, which I figured was probably reason enough. We never bought anything, and the items for sale seemed strange and out of place. There were random baubles, an excess of doilies and the strong, unmistakable smell of mothballs. Every once in a while, however, the eyes of a slow-moving passerby would widen like saucers and I’d watch as they’d become breathless, exclaiming, “I’ve been looking everywhere for this.”

Cloud Cult’s Advice from the Happy Hippopotamus feels much the same way. To many, it may be ignored as old, broken junk until someone realizes its true worth. It recalls very old Flaming Lips records – with a lo-fi groove but drifting in and out of theatrics - as well as the bizarre friendliness of Archers of Loaf and the strained folk mumblings of Modest Mouse, when so inclined. It jumbles these tendencies in scattered, complex patterns, leaving leftover parts on the counter and never thinking to clean them up; its disheveled nature adds to the band’s appeal and clear ambition.

As such, Advice from the Happy Hippopotamus isn’t meant to be tidied or sorted, it is best appreciated when sprawling out at its own leisure. Like a child who wants to become a farmer, a cowboy, a superhero, a spy and an astronaut, we can advise Cloud Cult to be anything they want to be and absolutely believe in their unlimited potential to do it all.

The list of the band’s capabilities is long and varied, able to play perfectly to their every whim: there are atmospheric, foreboding electronics, pseudo-Native American chants, siren-like animal calls, jazzy flute solos, spontaneous living room jam sessions, childlike singalongs, political anthems, roaring post-rock guitars, tales of the afterlife, barebones trip-hop, boggling philosophies of morals and mortals, tender, spirited reunions and, not least in all, accessibly stringy indie pop songs.

The album would be interesting enough as an observation piece, yet it is so inviting and catchy, playing with a range of art from sparkle glitter to sculpture, it would take a hard heart not to be captivated. As you are drawn into their vibrant, multicolored world - where the unpredictable is exhilarating and adventure is best shared with new friends – unsuspecting listeners will likely begin to cherish Advice from the Happy Hippopotamus in a most heartfelt way. It may be a mess of chipped, reglued bits and pieces to an outsider, but to those who recognize its importance it is a beloved, irreplaceable memory, symbolized.

Reviewed by Sarah Peters - Lost at Sea Magazine

Cloud Cult: Aurora Borealis Review

If the Beach Boys' lost Smile album, which Brian Wilson recently performed live, was a "teenage symphony to God", then Cloud Cult's Aurora Borealis is a grown-up symphony to the departed soul of a two-year-old child.

Cloud Cult mastermind Craig Minowa's life is the stuff of Greek tragedy or the book of Job. An environmental activist, he used to have it all: a home and organic farm outside Sandstone, Minnesota; a wife, his high school sweetheart, Connie; and an infant son, Kaidin. Then, on 23 February 2002, Kaidin fell asleep to the somber strains of Mozart's "Requiem" and, for reasons that remain unexplained medically, never awoke. Connie discovered the lifeless body the next morning. The couple's shared pain would become too much for their marriage to withstand, and they eventually divorced.

If Minowa existed in the plays of Sophocles, surely he'd have gouged his own eyes out by now. Yet in his all-consuming grief, somehow the environmentalist/songwriter finally found a way to channel his dual ambitions. His organic farm became an environmentally friendly home recording studio ("powered by geothermal heating and cooling", the liner notes helpfully inform us) and the offices for Earthology Records, billed as the world's only nonprofit record label. His torrent of emotions became a flood of recordings -- more than 100 songs, Minowa has said -- some of which would end up on Cloud Cult's third album, last year's They Live on the Sun.

Aurora Borealis, like its predecessor, uses solar imagery to express the musician's deep love for his son -- and fervent belief that through the sun and its effects on the Aurora Borealis, they remain connected (more on this later). "In seeing the northern lights, I really feel his presence," Minowa told the Duluth News Tribune. Nevertheless, where They Live on the Sun focused on our local ball of light and heat and sunspots, the new release is a more-direct communique to Kaidin: a message of love, tempered with anguish, transmitted through hope.

Like Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Aurora Borealis is the rare album that has the musical merit to match its great making-of story. Confident, mature, honest, inventive, eclectic, and unremittingly catchy: Minowa's fourth release deserves all the adjectives befitting a classic album.

While many of 2004's most-buzzed-about indie-rock albums are merely exercises in a trendy genre (from the endless garage-rock revival to the unremarkable post-post-punk of Franz Ferdinand), Cloud Cult displays the breadth of an iconic band to whom Franz Ferdinand is inexplicably compared, Blur. The two opening tracks introduce us to a driving, electronic-accented indie-rock and Minowa's vocals, a strangled mix of Doug Martsch and Conor Oberst with -- on these songs, at least -- Julian Casablancas-style distortion. But the rest of the album's 14 tracks touch on the atmospheric, the avant-garde, acoustic ballads, audio sample-based collage, and even politics.

"As Long As You're Happy", lamenting a failed relationship, is the perfect pop song. Acoustic guitar-based "I Guess This Dream Is For Me" could be the work of a more-optimistic Elliott Smith, augmented by a lovely orchestral flourish. As well as a master songsmith, Minowa is an innovator, as the abstract yet melodic meanderings of "My Secret Life With Amily" and "Grappling Hook/Northern Lights" establish. Kaidin even makes an eerie cameo in the latter track, via playful recordings made while he was alive.

Kaidin's poignant giggling reminds us that although Aurora Borealis no doubt was conceived in a period of abject misery, the album, like love itself, is not just solemn or weighty. Observe: How does this earth-saving, CD-case recycling genius introduce his theme of true love? Why, through a song called "Princess Bride," of course, sampling audio from the film of the same name. There's something sublime in the way Minowa takes the minister's unforgettably hilarious words, "Mawwiage is what bwings us togevah"... and then harmonizes with them.

For even bigger laughs, every self-respecting liberal should listen to "State of the Union", which splices together Bushisms in the manner of Black Grape's "Get Higher", which had Ronald Reagan saying, "Nancy and I are hooked on heroin." In Minowa's fun-with-sound-clips opus, President George W. Bush blithely announces, "Tonight I have a message for the people of Iraq: Go home and die."

It would be easy to neglect the lyrics amidst all the other forces at work on this impressive release. But the truth is that Minowa's words, just like his spacious soundscapes, both encapsulate his feelings of loss and transcend them to deliver a timeless homily on the strength of love. From "Chandeliers": "I'm always dumbin' up the smart things / And smartin' up the good things / And knottin' up my shoestrings / And messin' up the good things / But did you see the stars last night? / Punctuation for a perfect poe - Marc Hogan

On January 28, 2003, Craig Minowa was sitting at his drum set when President Bush delivered his State of the Union. Minowa, the brainchild behind the enviro-band Cloud Cult, was coming off an impossibly difficult 12 months. He had lost his 2-year-old son, who died in his sleep the previous February. His wife hit the road soon after. And Minowa was locking himself in his home studio in Sandstone, Minnesota, night after night until the sun came up, writing and escaping.
As Bush came on the radio, the torment came bleeding out of Minowa's drumsticks. He began beating a rhythm to Bush's words. "I had intense frustration. At the same time I was in awe of the speech," Minowa says. "It exercised all the tools of nationalism that Saddam and Hitler used." "State of the Union," from the group's second album, Aurora Borealis, is a cutup of dialogue from that speech and is easily the most daring song to come from a Minnesota songwriter since Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

The song, getting significant airplay on college, public and satellite radio stations, was remixed from files he downloaded on the Net, taking words from the speech and reassembling them to convey his own State of the Union. At one harrowing point, behind an ominous backbeat, you hear Bush say: "I've got a message for the people of Iraq: Go home and die."

Not all of Minowa's songs are about President Bush. But to say his music doesn't have a political agenda would be undercutting the mission of the band (Minowa on guitar, Dan Greenwood on drums, Sarah Young on cello). Minowa says Cloud Cult is an expression and a movement, in the vein of Deadheads and Deaniacs--a save-the-sky first, bring-on-the-music second collaboration whose name borrows from a Hopi Indian prophecy that forecasts the destruction of humankind in the technological age.

Cloud Cult shows are a commune of sorts. People dance in Woodstock garb, rekindling a bygone era when music and politics were one. Split-screen images are shown behind the band, put together by old Pink Floyd roadies who donate their time; Bush on one side, Hitler on the other.

The songs, your standard nonstandard indie-rock songs, with glitches, beeps, cellos, guitars and themes of loss, love and finding your way back home, have no hint of environmentalism in them. A Cloud Cult show is an aura. Likely, you go for the music, but you come out wanting to save the world.

"I thought they were two different worlds," says Minowa, who earned his degree in environmental studies. "I thought, either I can be in the world of music or I can be in a world of some sort of environmental pursuit," he adds. "It wasn't until years later that I decided they could meld together."

Earthology records, the label he runs, is an eco-friendly label in every sense of the word. Situated on an organic farm in Northern Minnesota that runs on wind energy, Earthology donates all profits after expenses to charity. They hand-assemble their own CDs to avoid PVC packaging, one of the world's worst-polluting products. (PVC is short for polyvinyl chloride.)

The way Cloud Cult got the gig in Dallas is typical of how the band travels the country. A fan from Dallas who heard Cloud Cult on satellite e-mailed Minowa and told him he could book a venue for the band. It's familiar territory. Sometimes the band spends the night at fans' homes, who sometimes tag along on tour. Imagine if the Grateful Dead were from Minnesota, replaced tie-dye and hemp with organic water and wool scarves, rocked out like Modest Mouse and Built to Spill--then you've got Cloud Cult.

"People would expect the music would be 'Go out and recycle,'" Minowa says. "No one would like that. The environmental movement is a holistic movement. It's ingrained in the music we do."

Cloud Cult really doesn't want to bring down the government. It just wants to raise awareness. "Eventually, the hope is that these shows turn into convoys," says Minowa. In order to do that, Cloud Cult must first conquer cities like Dallas, a place where the band doesn't chart well. At its height, Cloud Cult's first album, They Live on the Sun, reached No. 2 on the CMJ charts, knocking off Radiohead--of all bands--but in Texas the album has barely made a splash. And while the band certainly leans left, Minowa says, the show shouldn't be anything less than a lesson on how bands should act in a time of war, government ineptitude and corruption.

The show, which Minowa calls an "old-school hippie festival and modern-day politically oriented rave," is eclectic like a carnival. Fans sign petitions and wear costumes, garb Minowa pondered for a second should the band play "State of the Union." He asked, stoically, "Isn't it blasphemy to speak against Bush in Texas?"

- Chris Coomey