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Red Mile [Explicit Content](Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics, Colored Vinyl)
Product Notes
Crack Cloud has always been something beyond a rock band: both
profound and grand, vaporous and elusive.
The first iteration of Crack Cloud was formed nearly a decade ago as a
proxy-rehab outlet on the fringes of Calgary. Over time, two EPs and
accompanying visual pieces were produced out of the residence known
as Red Mile. By 2017, several members had relocated to Vancouver,
working out of harm reduction centers and low-barrier shelters. Sobriety,
self-reformation and the idealism of their work further formed an ethos
for Crack Cloud. It was during these years that the band produced their
astounding 2020 album Pain Olympics. At once, their vision became
expansive, cinematic.
Now, Red Mile is a bit of a homecoming. Members have returned to
Calgary. But Calgary/home has become a liminal space, a place of flux.
After a decade of personal and collective growth, what does home even
mean? Red Mile is, for them, something like samsara: a return and a
rebirth.
Red Mile's sound breathes expansive energy into the circuitous, street
bound sonics of Crack Cloud's prior material. Fizzling synths intertwine
with chiming pianos. Songs layer like Russian nesting dolls; one may find
a Ramones chorus set within a desolate Western prog soundtrack only to
watch it erupt into a joyous anthem. Real-ass guitars - alternately lilting,
scuzzy and soaring - ring out across wide sun-bleached spaces. In 2024,
the cumulative effect is (in rock instrumentation terms) naturalistic. Any
whiff of embalmed nostalgia is absent. Even the close of the album - a
winding, alllllmost Jerry Garcia guitar noodle that leads us out of Red Mile
- is delivered without sentimentality. Principal songwriter Zach Choy's
lyrics are cutting but merciful, with a sharp self awareness that never
slides into self-satisfaction. Crack Cloud as artists are critical - and
ultimately as forgiving - of themselves as they are the melting world
around them. The songs balance an easy charm and cathartic power:
affirming life without denying death.
Recorded predominantly between the outskirts of Joshua Tree California,
and Calgary, Alberta, this record is informed by a bittersweet mélange of
old and new. The sprawling, novelistic structures of their previous albums
are condensed and sharpened, while maintaining their refusal to delve
into superficiality. Through playful melodies and elliptical guitar soliloquy,
they deliver a final product of exceptional depth and distinctly
unprecious warmth. Crack Cloud have produced a mature, vital work that
interrogates the platitudes of the rock-n-roll lifestyle, but ultimately exalts
it's sacredness.
Red Mile's de facto thesis statement "The Medium" is itself a rock song
meditation: an ode to the form and it's practitioners. This genre that -
typical, repeatable, corporatized as it can be - somehow still has the
power to help us live through life. We see the dusty sentiment of "I love
rock and roll" exhumed, taken apart, and stitched back together. It's a
song guided by faith - if the medium helps us proclaim our love today,
it's worth protecting from derision tomorrow. We live in an era where
music seems to love hitting it's head against the wall. Crack Cloud's Red
Mile is the sound - the feeling! - of the bricks giving way.
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